How to Play the Flam on a Djembe Drum

Video Transcript

Hello! My name is Aaron Moon and I’m here today on behalf of expertvillage.com. The third rudiment is the flam and the flam is basically two hits on the hand drum one coming slightly before the other. So in order to accomplish this you want one hand starting closer to the hand drum than the other, so it’ll look something like this when you start now my right hand is closer, my left hand is higher up and the flam is going to produce a sound like such. Now you see my hands after the first one went into the opposite position, so after the flam my right hand goes up my left hand goes down and then the next flam produces the same sound only with the left hand starting and the right hand finishing, so I’ll do a few so you can see it in a progression. Now as I mentioned before in an earlier clip, you can do a flam on the Djembe in various ways you can do it on the edge of the rim like I did producing a tinnier sound, a higher pitch sound you can do it in the middle and that produces more of a bass tone. It’s a great instrument because you can do the same rudiments, you can do the same leeks and you get a variety of different sounds out of them.

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