Any drummer familiar with the standard fife and drum repertoire will immediately recognize Flam Accents as the backbone of most 6/8 beatings.
They are played:
Flam Accents in British and American Music:
The Flam Accent appears in several 6/8 beatings found in 18th century drum manuscripts.
Taken from the second half of the beating “A Troop Long” p. 34.
Rumrille (1817) is the only early-19th century reference to a “Flam Accent”. He performs them like the modern Flam Accent in many of his 6/8 beatings.
Robinson (1818) uses rudiments called a “Flam and a Two” and a “Seven and a Two” in several of his 6/8 beatings. However, they are not properly Flam Accents but Swiss Army Triplets.
Hazeltine (1810) also has a “Flam and a Two” and a “Seven and a Two”, except his are in 2/4 and appear to be Flagada.
Keach, Burditt, & Cassidy (1861) and Howe (1862) use Flam Accents in many of their 6/8 beatings. However, they do not name them as rudiments. Hart uses the descriptive term for the Flam Accent, calling them “a Flam and two half blows”. Bruce & Emmett (1862) refer to them as a “Flam Accent No. 1” (the Flam Accent No. 2 referring to Flam Taps in 6/8 time). Strube (1869) uses the name Flam Accent, which is now the standard name.
In performing the rudiment, Hart goes further to suggests that the two strokes should be soft strokes.
Flam Accents, or Patafla, in French Music:
In the French, Flam Accents are “Patafla” – which literally translates to right stroke (pa), left stroke (ta), and flam (fla).
It’s unclear how old this rudiment is, however, and it’s possible that the name originally meant the Swiss Army Triplet.
The modern Patafla is alternating strokes, the same way the English perform the Flam Accent (see Tourte).
The onomatopoeic French term for this rudiment suggests the Patafla was originally performed like a Swiss Army Triplet. When working with French music, it’s important to remember that the French play towards the beat. This is the opposite of the Americans, who tend to start on the beat and work off of it. So the onomatopoeic name really appears to mean Right-Flam, Right Stroke, Left Stroke, Right-Flam, etc.
Today, what we call the “Swiss Army Triplet” is actually just a common method of performing triplets – seen far more often in historic drum manuals than the English Flam Accent.
Additionally, resources from foreign countries suggests a fairly universal use of these sounds. The Swiss use the pa-ta system in their ordonnances. Pistofilo’s use of “pa” and “ta” indicate that the Italians and possibly the Spanish used the same sounds (118-122). The English’s use of “pou” for the right and “tou” for the left suggest a similar origin (as seen in Charles I’s 1633 Warrant and Lovering’s manual).
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