Flam Placements

Flam Placements drills the physical demands of playing flam accents (the dut-digga-dut one handed breakdown: R-rrr-R-rrr-), but instead of spending a bunch of time adding various pieces of the rudiment to this one handed breakdown, you will be moving an accent around within this pattern in order to build a command over grace-note placement. This change in priorities elevates the “dut digga dut”-style exercise into something that more effectively builds grace-note control and encourages the correct application of multiple heights.

The first pattern (meas. 1 & 5) works the common “taps before a flam” motif, while also hitting the one-handed breakdown of flam accents. The second pattern (meas. 2 & 6) works on the tap-flam-tap motif that happens within flam accents. The third pattern (meas. 3 & 7) works the common “taps after a flam” motif, while also hitting the one-handed breakdown of flam accents. You are challenged to perform a consistent one-handed breakdown while subtly changing the timing of the taps in order to correctly assign each of the three low strokes an appropriate role as a true tap or as the grace note of a flam. This additional demand will force you to improve your awareness of grace-note timing, and the extra attention you have to pay to these taps will force you to improve your height definition.

For these reasons, I will go out on a limb and say that these modifications make this “flam accent heights” exercise an even better flam accent heights exercise and a more broadly useful flams builder. For being pretty hip, pretty basic, but also unique and immensely useful, I am especially proud of this warm-up.

Slow Lifts

Slow Lifts (2021) is the flams builder for everyone! It’s all about flam fundamentals: specifically, dropping the grace note from a low height and then slowly lifting to the accent height to comfortably occupy time and space with motion. Snares and tenors have a three-height pattern to accentuate the distinction between a true grace note and a primary note at any dynamic. This warm-up is well suited to a line with performers of many different skill levels.

Kicked in the Grace

Kicked in the Grace (2007) is a four-measure flam étude that employs a myriad of grace-note contexts: flam-accents, flam-taps, swiss triplets, inverted flam-taps, etc. The scope is broadened by adding drags to produce different variations.

In a line setting, the variations can be chained together as appropriate. Additionally, the snare and quad parts, by ending on an eighth note upbeat, allow "off the left" variations to be seamlessly added to the sequence.

Blat

Blat (2010) combines triplestrokes with hugadigs (one-handed breakdown of a flam-tap) and flam rudiments. The more thinly-written middle part centres around what's called the "Cary lick" in the quad line, with a flam accent breakdown in the snare line.

The way the heights are notated, there is a slight difference between the threes of the triplestroke bars, and those of the flam-tap bars, though not every instructor/line makes such a distinction. I think of triplestrokes as being allowed a bit more freedom to rebound, while hugadigs are controlled a bit more to achieve a lower height on the third note (the grace note of the flam-tap).

Flams '09

Flams '09 (2009) was the flams warmup of the 2009 NC State Drumline. It covers flam accents, flam-taps, and (for the snares) inverted flam taps. There are some flam drags at the end too, so good luck with those. I think this is a good piece for a university drumline, since the upper battery works on the main flam demands that a college line should expect to encounter, while the bass line gets a bit more work on doublestrokes. The snares are required to play inverted flam taps, while the quads work on the upstroke motion in the context of the skank/mute patterns that are often encountered in street beats and stadium grooves.

If I were to use this piece today, I would change the first two bars to be double-stops in the snare and quad parts, since that forces performers to work on the quadruple-stroke that shows up in the written flam pattern.