Flam Accent

Grip & Sticking

Also called twelve-stroke flam accent, flam accents.

A flam, then two quiet taps inside an eighth-note triplet — one flammed accent followed by two alternating single strokes — with the lead hand flipping on every group. Think of it as a single stroke roll played in triplets with a flam grafted onto each accent. Three notes per group: one loud, two soft.

This is the rudiment behind triplet shuffles and ballad fills. Run one group per tom in twelve-eight time and you have the rolling tom fills off decades of soul and rock records. Split it between hi-hat and snare with the flams on beats two and four and a slow triplet groove starts to swing hard.

Drop the flams and get clean eighth-note triplets against a metronome at 60 bpm, accenting the first note of each group. Add the flam only when the triplet grid feels locked in. Keep both taps well below the accent — if all three notes come out the same level, you are just playing a roll with extra steps.