Learning to play flams and drags is like adding more letters to your drumming vocabulary. From playing quick sixteenth notes to creative fills, flams and drags can add the texture you need to make your drumming sound the best!

What is a Flam?

Playing a flam during a groove or through a fill primarily means adding space between any two notes. To add more to your musicality and sound, flams are usually played right after a bar of any particular groove to start a fill.

How Can I Play a Flam?

Playing a flam is nothing but playing single strokes at approximately the same time. As it is understood that playing flams is to add space between two notes, ensure both your single strokes are played not at the exact same time, but a little delayed.

A flam is generally played during an eighth note fill and is played at every quarter note position. Keep in mind to add a kick drum after every flam hit on the snare drum. In this case, before moving on to add flams on other parts of the kit, practise them on the snare drum. Remember that if you hear both your left and right hand hitting the snare drum at the same time, you aren’t doing it right. Give the necessary space between each note and see how it sounds.

As mentioned before, follow a flam hit with a kick drum to make it sound solid and on time. In musical terms, if you are playing an eighth note groove for a bar, the flam should be on counts 1-2-3-4 while the kick drum is played on the & of counts 1-2-3-4.

Practise this on the snare drum first at a slower pace before moving to play flams on the hi-tom, mid-tom and the floor-tom.

What are Drags?

Playing a drag is a technique followed by some of the most popular drummers in the world. A drag is basically two sixteenth note hits played in quick succession or playing two notes that give an impression of a drag. This means that playing a softer left hand single stroke and following it by an accented sixteenth note hit with the right hand completes the drag. 

A drag can played as is, which is playing two quick sixteenth note hits or can be played right before you play the single stroke rudiment. 

Here is a great example; play a regular 4/4 rock beat in an eighth note groove, after the 3rd bar, play a drag on 4 with the kick drum, a left-hand single stroke on the high-tom on the “e” of 4, and a single stroke rudiment completing the ‘&’ and ‘a’ of 4 on the floor tom with the crash on 1, which repeats the cycle.

Once you feel comfortable playing flams and drags, try to add them together after the groove as a fill. It’s all about improvising and making it your own. As for the next blog post, we focus on ghost notes and grace notes.