PAS #28 · Flam rudiments
Swiss Army Triplet
6 main strokes, 2 grace notes over 2 beats. Read it, hear it, and slow it down until it is even.
lRRL rLLR
Capital letters are full strokes; small letters are the quiet grace notes of a flam or drag.
What the swiss army triplet is
A flam, then a second stroke with the same hand, then the other hand — a triplet with overlapping doubles that is far easier to play fast than a flam accent.
How to practice it
- A flam, then the same hand again, then the other hand — the doubled hand is what gives it its sound.
- Count triplets and keep the two notes after the flam quiet.
- It sounds like a flam accent but is easier to play fast because one hand stays put.
Where it leads
The swiss army triplet belongs to the flam rudiments family, and it feeds directly into fast triplet flam passages and 6/8 marching cadences. 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.
Rudiment data last updated . Every diagram here, in the printable PDF and in the chart image comes from one dataset, so the paper and the screen cannot disagree.