Nine on a Hand (Flam Drag Builder) is similar to Eighteen on a Hand, but it focuses on the distinction between taps and grace notes while drawing your attention to different features of the flam drag rudiment. Ideally, grace notes are played from the tacet height in order to create the best sounding flams possible; i.e., the grace note does not speak as powerfully as the taps or diddles. This approach is the flams equivalent of “doublestrokes consist of two equal attacks.” While the ideal will not always be feasible, understanding it and being able to apply it where it is reasonably achievable will improve your execution across the range of rudimental contexts.
Chugga-Chugga-Wuggas
Cheese-5 Gritty
Cheese-5 Gritty is an exercise for building precision and consistency with flam-fives... and getting down to the nitty gritty of flam-fives. It focuses on the second diddle releasing on an eighth-note upbeat and works on the slight contrast between grace-note height (tacet height, or "1/2 inch") and tap height (often called "3 inches"). While achieving this contrast is infeasible as tempo increases, it is an important ideal to understand, build on, and strive for.
The analogy I use is that, with doublestrokes, we strive for two completely equal motions at slower tempi, even though that becomes infeasible as tempo increases. And even at the quicker tempi, by thinking about those two equal motions and getting more sound out of the second note, we get more doublestroke quality without actually reaching that ideal of "two equal motions". Flams are the same way. Oftentimes, by simply thinking about that grace-note being "underneath" the taps, we control it just that little bit more to get it low enough and early enough to create a good-sounding flam.
