The Weight Room: Flam Accent/Tap Groove

This one's pretty simple, but an awesome exercise to get your hands moving and your flams to smooth out.

It looks like this:

It is played as four flam accents followed by two flam taps.

Once you've got it smoothed out, here are some cool ways to apply it to the kit:

• Play it over jazz feet - light quarters on all four beats, crisp hat on two and four.
• Hi-hat on two and four, with bass drum notes on the flams.
• Hat two and four, kick notes on the 16th before or after the flams.
• Play the 16ths shuffled, hat on two and four - and try out some of the kick patterns mentioned previously. 
• Put the iPod on shuffle, and play it along with whatever comes up. 

Above all, make it groove. The more musical it can be, the more you're doing it right!

As always, happy drumming!