With free worksheet included!
While a flam may be easy for a student to grasp conceptually, achieving it physically is a much more demanding task. To achieve a good flam sound, the student must pay close attention to both stick height and velocity, but young students may not yet understand how to adjust these things on the spot. Therefore, a flam is a wonderful way to take their skills to the next level. Once a basic flam is achieved, the student unlocks a whole new sound world, and countless additional flam rudiments are soon to follow. It’s a very exciting milestone!
However, with any milestone comes obstacles. Music educators know that their time with a student is very limited compared to the time the student spends practicing by themselves. Some common bad muscle memory habits I see my students pick up in their practice sessions are…
- Opening up the flam too far (meaning the grace note sounds more like a 16th-note pickup)
- “Prepping” one or both hands before the beat, disrupting the height difference and delaying the downbeat
- Forcing the accented hand down too quickly, making it the grace note by accident!
So that my students can continue the positive momentum from a lesson into their practice sessions, I provide them a short worksheet that reinforces good habits. You can download it for free below!
First Day of Flams: Lesson Plan
Approx. Time: 20min (but flexible – can also be paired with an upstroke/downstroke lesson and/or flam tap lesson)
Age Group: Elementary & up
Appropriate Settings: One-on-one lessons, group lessons, beginner percussion classes, “pull-out” lessons, take-home activity
Pre-requisites: Upstroke, downstroke, full stroke, tap, basic dynamics
- Begin with a light warmup that utilizes dynamics
- Review upstrokes, downstrokes, full strokes, and taps (I enjoy timing my flam lesson to directly follow my upstroke/downstroke lesson… it keeps the momentum going!)
- Ask students to try an experiment with you. If they drop both sticks on the ground at the same time from different heights, do they think they will land at the same time?
- Test it! Which stick lands first?
- Now, what if you drop them almost at the same time? How does that change the sound they make?
- Emphasize to students that we are only dropping the sticks, not throwing. Compare this to how we don’t want to launch our sticks upward before playing, only drop downward using gravity.
- Demonstrate a flam and ask students what noise it made. Ask students to recreate the sound with their voice. Keep it light and fun – entertain any giggles!
- Follow along with the worksheet (downloadable below) to build the skill, and send students home with it to encourage healthy habits at home!
- NOTE: If you have more time on your hands, this lesson plan pairs very well with either a dynamics/stroke type lesson on the front half of the lesson, or a more advanced flam rudiment lesson on the second half.
Did this work for you? Comment below or reach out and let me know your thoughts. I would love to hear your own favorite beginner lesson strategies as well!
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