How to master the flam on snare drum - Full Video

Let's see what our left-handed grace note is doing. Ready, and. What's up, everybody? It's your favorite drum teacher, and I'm back with another snare drum lesson today for any drummer, any skill set. Today, I'm gonna be using my Evans Real Feel Attack Pad, and I'm gonna be doing some HD1s, some Vic First. All right, so the rudiment we wanna talk about today is one of the hardest rudiments to master, and that, my friend, is called the what? The flam, all right? First of all, let's say that word flam, flam, that F-L sound, flam, flam. That's the sound you're trying to get your sticks to make. Flam, flam, flam. A lot of times when people play the flam, let's say, for instance, when they play a right flam, their left hand comes too high, and then opposite hand comes too high. All right, so what we should focus on is that grace note, keeping that grace note down, and trying your best just to drop the stick on the flam. Don't try your best not to lift up, and then drop, just try to drop. All right, that's a right flam. So I'm gonna put my right stick down, right? I'm gonna play this, my right hand in the air. Let's see what our left-handed grace note is doing. Ready, and, all right, try your best to go down. Try your best not to do this, up, up, down. All right, try your best to go down. All right, just dropping that grace note. All right, it's hard. I don't even really have a master to be honest with you. Down, let's try it on the left hand, on the right hand. So this is a left flam. I'm playing that right hand in the air. Good. If you can get that grace note mastered, then you can do this. All right, here we go. So let's try a right flam. Hold note. Two, three, four. All right, so those sticks attack the pad at two separate times, but they are so close. Like, to be honest with you, this rudiment is even hard to explain, to be honest with you. So I'd rather just try to play it than do too much talking, all right? Right flam. Left flam. Right flam. Left flam. This time I'm gonna ghost the right hand. I'm not gonna hit the pad. Good, let's try it again. Left flam. Oh, wrong. Left flam. So let's try the alternator now. Two. So what you don't wanna do is you don't want both sticks to hit at the exact same time, because then you'll be doing something like a double stop. All right? There's a difference between a double stop and a flam. And you can hear that. Fluh, fluh. Fluh. Flam. Am. Flam. Take it slow. Let's ghost it again. Dropping that tap. That was a bad one. Good, and then there's so many flam rudiments you can do. Flam taps. Accents. So many flam rudiments, but you gotta get that flam first. Because if you can't play the flam correctly, it's gonna be hard to play those other rudiments. For instance, if you're playing your flams like this, and then when it's time to play flam accents, it's gonna be here. Gotta keep that gray snow down. Peace.