Introduction to Flams [6-12-06]

The "Flam" is a very important and widely used rudiment, both on the drum kit and on snare drum. There is a whole family of "Flam Rudiments" which are also rudiments based upon the flam.

Flams use a special type of note called a 'Grace Note'. This is the one that is in very small print just before the main accent note which is much bigger. The picture below shows the grace note (look at the big arrow ;) ).



The grace note is played extremely softly. The hit should be as soft as you can make it, barely raising your stick from the pad or drum when played. The grace note is played just before the main note. They are so close together that they are almost being played at the same time.

So how do we play flams?

A flam is just a soft grace note played slightly before a single accented note. The sound should be just like the sound of the word flam. The accent is a down stroke, and the grace note is and up stroke. This means that after one flam the hands are ready and in position for the next flam, which is with the other hand. When we play them in this way were we swap from one hand to the other, we call it playing "hand to hand" flams like the ones pictured below are sometimes called "hand to hand flams".



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