Two sticks, one sound — the fattest note on the drum.
The Rudiment
The flam is the parent of an entire family. It is two strokes played so close together that the ear registers a single, thickened note: a quiet grace note landing an instant before the louder primary stroke. Done right, you don’t hear “ta-ta.” You hear one broad, weighted attack with a little extra body underneath it — the sound of a note that has been widened rather than doubled.
The whole trick lives in the spacing. Too far apart and it flams into a distinct pair of notes; too close and it collapses into a single flat stroke with no depth. The flam is the width itself.
Sticking
The standard PAS sticking alternates: lR then rL. The lowercase stick is the grace note, played low; the uppercase stick is the accented primary, played high. So a right-hand flam is a soft left grace into a strong right primary, and the left-hand flam mirrors it. Counted straight, one flam per beat, the hands trade lead each time.
How to Play
Set the grace-note stick low — an inch or two off the head — and the primary stick high, and drop them so the low one speaks a hair before the high one. The height difference is what guarantees the timing and the dynamic split; if both sticks start at the same height you get a chaotic double instead of a flam. Keep the grace note genuinely soft. The primary carries the accent and the pitch; the grace just adds shoulder to it.
In Practice
Flams are everywhere a drummer wants a note to sound bigger without playing louder — the fat backbeat, the emphatic downbeat of a fill, the weighted accents of a marching line. Orchestral snare writing leans on them constantly, and they are the seed from which the flam accent, the flam tap, and the Swiss army triplet all grow.