FLAM ACCENT

The Flam Accent is a very commonly used rudiment, mostly in 6/8 time.  It consists of a Flam, followed by a tap on the opposite hand that played the primary stroke of the flam, followed by one more alternating tap.  As with all flam rudiments, care should be placed on the spacing of the flam, as well as the consistency of the rhythm following the flam.  The taps, sometimes referred to as the ‘inner notes,’ must be played with intention to maintain a truly even rhythm throughout the rudiment.

The flam accent is written in triplet form but can regularly be seen over semi-quavers (16th notes) where by the first of every three notes has a flam attached to them.  The flam is played with an accent whilst all other notes are played evenly at the dynamic stated. This rudiment would be played hand to hand with an object tempo of crotchet = 132.

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The Patafla Stroke is well known in Switzerland, linked to the Basler drumming and hence assigned to the “Basler Rudiment Family”. It is important to play the accents forte and piano strokes piano. Swiss literature suggests to play the piano strokes even as soft as grace strokes. The starting tempo is 30 quarters per minute, then the rhythmical feeling changes into triplets and finally the rudiment is ended in a tempo as fast as 144. Throughout this acceleration, the triplets must be kept rhythmical.

In modern drumming, it is seldomly seen in its natural triplet structure but occurs often in a sixteenth-notes rhythm. The triplet structure can be observed in older Basler style marches.

It has to be emphasized that, contrary to wide misconception, not the Basler invented the Batafla as they speak German. Ba-Ta-Fla is a French acronym for the rudiment itself: “Ba – Ta” describing the piano strokes and “Fla” the Flam.

La tradition française veut qu’entre deux temps d’un tempo donné, ce qui se trouve entre ou anacrouse, appartient au deuxième temps, donc il s’agit plutôt d’un Patafla.

Ce rudiment peut aussi bien se retrouver en binaire qu’en ternaire, dans des débits différents. Le fla, legèrement plus fort, se trouve toujours sur le temps, les deux autres coups en levant de ce temps, piano.

Ce rudiment se retrouve aussi bien dans des oeuvres traditionnelles que modernes.