Flam

What the flam is

Two hands striking almost together: a quiet grace note a hair before the main stroke, so one note sounds thicker rather than two notes sounding separately. The whole trick is stick height — the grace-note hand starts about an inch off the head, the accent hand a foot above it, and both drop at the same time. If you can hear two distinct notes the grace note is too early; if you hear a single thin note both hands landed together.

How to practise it

• Set the heights before you play a note: grace-note stick about an inch off the head, accent stick about a foot above it. Then drop both hands at the same moment.
• Listen for the fault. Two clearly separate notes means the grace note came too early; one thin note means both hands landed together.
• Alternate: right-hand flam, left-hand flam, and keep the spacing identical in both directions. Most players have a good flam on one side and a sloppy one on the other.
• Play them slowly and loudly. Flams at low volume hide the timing error you are trying to find.

Where it leads

The flam belongs to the flam rudiments family, and it feeds directly into the flam tap, flam accent, flamacue, flam paradiddle and every other flam rudiment. Get it even at a slow tempo before you move on — every rudiment built on top of it inherits whatever unevenness you leave here.

Reading the notation above

Both hands play the snare drum, so every notehead sits in the third space of the staff and the sticking letters underneath tell you which hand plays which note. Capital letters are full strokes; small letters are grace notes. The small noteheads with a slash through the stem are the grace notes of the ornament — they are played almost simultaneously with the note that follows, not as separate beats. The > marks above the staff are accents: hit those notes harder. Full details in the drum notation guide.