Flam, then let the rebound answer.
The Rudiment
The flam tap is a flam followed immediately by a single tap played with the same hand that just struck the primary. Play a right-hand flam, then let that right stick bounce back down for a tap; play a left-hand flam, then tap with the left. The pattern is a chain of these two-note cells, alternating leads, so it reads as “flam-tap, flam-tap” rolling from hand to hand.
Because the tap is taken by the accented hand on its own rebound, the rudiment teaches control of a stroke that has to produce both a strong accented flam and a soft controlled tap in quick succession.
Sticking
The standard PAS sticking is lRR then rLL, repeating. The lowercase letter is the flam’s grace note; the first uppercase stroke is the accented primary; the second same-hand stroke is the unaccented tap. Counted in eighths or sixteenths, the accented flam falls on the beat and the tap on the “and.”
How to Play
The engine is the rebound. Strike the flam with a full accented stroke, then relax the wrist and let the stick return for a low, soft tap rather than lifting and hitting again. Meanwhile the opposite hand is prepping its grace note low to the head. Keeping the two taps genuinely quiet against the fat flams is the whole game — it’s a study in accent-tap dynamics inside a single hand.
In Practice
The flam tap is a core rudimental workout and shows up across marching literature as a driving, accented texture. On the kit it becomes a broken, flammed sixteenth pattern for grooves and fills, and it directly sets up its trickier cousin, the inverted flam tap, where the sticking flips.