Flam Practice – Sticking Control Guide

Without a doubt, the Flam is the most ubiquitous rudiment across nationalities and is one of the foundational rudiments, alongside the Drag and Double Stroke Roll.

No matter the time period or nationality, you need to know how to play alternating flams.

In my experience, the two things that separate a “good” drummer from a “great” drummer are their Double Stroke Rolls and Flams.

Good Flams come from having great sticking control.

The better your sticking control, and therefore Flams, the easier it will be for you to play more difficult Flam Rudiments, such as Flam Accents, Flamacues, Inverted Flam Taps, and more.

To learn more, check out the History of Flam Rudiments. You can also see more about the various rudiments built from Flams.

what is a Flam?

The Flam is a two-handed rudiment.

One hand starts high and plays a hard stroke. The other hand starts low and plays a grace note. Both hands beginning moving at the same time to strike the drum nearly at the same time.

A Flam should sound much like it’s name: F-lam.

Perfecting your flams

There are two important elements to great flams.

1. You need good sticking control to keep the grace note hand low (aka, to keep a visible difference between the high and low hands).
2. You need great sticking control to alternate cleanly from a Right-Hand Flam to a Left-Hand Flam.

The exercises below will help to develop the required sticking control to clean up your flams.

Exercise 1: Taps

Soft notes can be tricky to play, especially for newer drummers. This first exercise is an easy warm-up that develops your taps.

To perform this exercise:

• Focus on one hand at a time.
• Keep your hand as low as possible (1-3 inches from the drum head).
• To strike the drum, simply twist from the wrist.
  • Taps should NOT be loud, so don’t try to “wind up” or raise the stick more than 3 or 4 inches.

Exercise 2: Up Strokes

Up Strokes are a type of stroke that you should master early to learn a lot of control over your drumming.

To perform this exercise:

• Focus on one hand at a time.
• Start the hand in “Tap Position”: 1-3 inches from the drum head.
• Twist from the wrist to strike the drum.
• Immediately move into “Stroke Position”: 8-12 inches from the drum head, or roughly in line with your chin.
• Use the rest to “reset” your hand back to “Tap Position”.

When you play alternating flams, the Grace Note hand plays an Up Stroke: striking low in “Tap Position” and immediately popping up into “Stroke Position”.

This exercise trains your hand to play the Grace Note of a Flam into position to play the Strong Note of a Flam.

Without this control, you won’t alternate Flams well.

Exercise 3: Down Strokes

Down Strokes are another type of stroke that you should master early to learn a lot of control over your drumming.

To perform this exercise:

• Focus on one hand at a time.
• Start the hand in “Stroke Position”: 8-12 inches from the drum head, or roughly in line with your chin.
• Use the forearm to drop the hand down to strike the drum.
• After striking the drum, squeeze the stick slightly to “catch” it in the “Tap Position”: 1-3 inches from the drum head.
• Use the rest to “reset” your hand back to “Stroke Position”.

When you play alternating flams, the Strong Note hand plays a Down Stroke: dropping from the “Stroke Position” and immediately catching itself in the “Tap Position”.

This exercise trains your hand to play the Strong Note of a Flam into position to play the Grace Note of a Flam.

This is the control most people lack in their Flams, which means their grace note is usually way too high in their flams.

Exercise 4: Up Strokes + Down Strokes

If you break down flams, one hand is playing an Up Stroke opposite the other hand’s Down Stroke.

So, the key to great Flams is your ability to cleanly move from Up Strokes to Down Strokes on each hand.

To perform this exercise:

• Focus on one hand at a time.
• Start the hand in “Stroke Position”: 8-12 inches from the drum head, or roughly in line with your chin.
• Play a Down Stroke.
• Play an Up Stroke.
• Continue alternating. At first, stop after each stroke to assess your hand’s position. As you get more comfortable, try playing continuously.

If you can play a continuous string of Down Strokes and Up Strokes on one hand, you can play a clean sequence of Flams.

Exercise 5: Quarter Note Flams

Now we’ll put together Ex 4 into Flams.

To perform this exercise:

• Start with your Right Hand in “Stroke Position”: 8-12 inches from the drum head, or roughly in line with your chin.
• Start with your Left Hand in “Tap Position”: 1-3 inches from the drum head.
• Drop the hands at the same time, so that they strike the drum almost at the same time. (The Tap Hand will strike slightly ahead of the Stroke Hand.)
• Immediately swap position.
  • NOTE: The “Stroke Hand” performs a Down Stroke. The “Tap Han” performs an Up Stroke.
• Continue alternating. At first, stop after each stroke to assess your hand’s position. As you get more comfortable, try playing continuously.

Music Reading

• How to tell it’s a Flam?
  • Notice that there’s a small note and a large note, just like your sticks.
• Is it a Right-Hand Flam or Left-Hand Flam?
  • If the large note is under the staff, it’s a Right-Hand Flam – because the Right Hand is the hard or dominate hand.
  • If the large note is over the staff, it’s a Left-Hand Flam – because the Left Hand is the hard hand.

Please note, historically this naming convention is messy. About half of drum manuals call it a “Right Hand Flam” if the Right Hand is the High Hand. The other half call it a “Right Hand Flam” when the Right Hand is the Grace Note, or first note, of the Flam.

For more info, check out my blog post “High Hand or Grace Note: How Do You Name a Flam?“

Tips

• At first, play with the rest and use that beat to assess how well you’ve set your hands up for the opposite flam. This is the time to decide which hand or type of stroke needs more work.
• Be careful of “waving” your hands. The Up Stroke should go straight up, at a slight, natural curve. It should not “wave” forward of the drum. It also should not raise higher than your nose.
  • If you find the stick above your shoulder, you’re moving too much. Go back to Exercises 2 and 3 and focus on the top height going no higher than your chin or nose.

Exercise 6: Eighth Note Flams

Most of the time, you’ll play Flams as Eighth Notes, or two per step.

Here, we’ll practice to a metronome to help improve your Flams’ speed.

To perform this exercise:

• Set a metronome to 60 BPM, with two clicks per beat.
  • If your metronome cannot subdivide, set your metronome to 2x the tempo (120bpm).
  • Increase by 5bpm (10bpm) increments until 90bpm (180bpm).
• Start on a Right-Hand Flam (aka, your Right Hand in “Stroke Position”, Left Hand in “Tap Position”).
• For every click of the metronome, play a Flam.
  • Alternate cleanly from Right Hand to Left Hand high the whole way through.

Tips

It’s very helpful to watch yourself in front of a mirror (or powered off TV) and look for these issues:

• Play through once focusing just on the High Hand.
  • Look for the high hand to consistently reach your chin. If it’s sometimes your chest and sometimes above your shoulder, this is an issues. Return to Ex 2 & 3.
• Play through once focusing just on the Low Hand.
  • Look for the low hand to consistently hoover just above the drum. The lower the better.
• Play through once looking at the height difference between your hands.
  • Ideally, there should be a very large, clear gap between the sticks.
  • The longer you play, the more likely they’ll start to level out so that the high hand gets lower and the low hand gets lower.
  • You might find one side is stronger than the other (ie, the left hand doesn’t get very low when it should be a grace note, but the right hand does).
• Play through once listening very closely to the metronome.
  • Does each flam match a click?
  • If not, is it always the Left Flam? Yes – then you’re rushing the inside beat, even though you’re keeping the overall marching cadence. Force your Left Hand to get higher before playing a Left Hand Flam.
  • If not, are you just constantly pushing and pulling against the beat? Yes – then you need to get your “Stroke Hand” higher to slow yourself down.

Final Thoughts on the Flam

Mastery of the Double Stroke Roll is necessary, but mastery of the Flam is what sets good drummers apart from great drummers.

Clean Flams will make your performance of simple beatings look crisp and neat.

Clean Flams will also make is possible to play fast flams, like you’ll need for the French L’Assemblee, or difficult flam rudiments like Inverted Flam Taps and Pataflaflas.

Download a pdf of the Flam exercises for practice purposes.

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Interested in learning more about Double Stroke Rolls and their History? Check out:

• Roll Rudiments and learn about types of rolls, like 4s, 5, 7, etc.
• Historic Performance the Double Stroke Roll
• Understanding Roll Rhythms
• When Did Drummers Start Rolling?
• The Ruffle

Want to learn more about French duty calls and other French music? Check out:

• 18th Century French Drumming
• Performing French Duty Calls
• Performing Philidor’s Drum Beatings
• Virtuosic French Drumming

Want more practice guides?

• Authentic Right-Hand Grip Practice Guide
• Double Stroke Roll – Beginner Practice Guide
• The Ra Simple / 4-Stroke Roll / Swiss Ruff Practice Guide
• The 5-Stroke Roll Practice Guide
• The 7-Stroke Roll Practice Guide
• The 9-Stroke Roll Practice Guide
• The Double Stroke Roll – Advanced Practice Guide
• The Three Camps Practice Guide
• The Double Drag Practice Guide