Flam Tap

Grip & Sticking

Also called nine-stroke flam tap, flam taps.

Take a double stroke roll and flam the first stroke of each pair: a flammed right-hand stroke followed by its quiet second stroke — flam, tap — then the left-hand version. The accent is the flam's primary note; the tap after it stays low. Repeat it and the pattern alternates hands inside itself for free.

Flam taps put muscle into a backbeat. Flam the snare accents on two and four, let the taps land where ghost notes belong, and a plain rock groove suddenly pushes and pulls. It shows up all through R&B and gospel, and around the toms it turns an ordinary fill into something fat and rolling.

Work the underlying diddles first, without flams, at 60 to 80 bpm against a metronome: accent-tap, accent-tap, with the tap quiet every single time. Keep the grace note low and close to its primary. The classic mistake is letting the tap creep up in volume — that turns a groove into a machine gun. Add the flam only once the taps are disciplined.