Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Drum Flams (Read 2694 times) previous topic - next topic

Drum Flams

The instrument I am competent of playing is Drums,
and one of the neat tricks you can do on them is to
play a crack sound on each note. For instance one
may play succesive eighths in 2/4 as " tak-tak tak-tak"
and the first eighth can be a flam: " crack-tak tak-tak",
the introduction of the second beating on the first eighth
having no effect on the timing of the rest. I tried to
overcome this by introducing a last 64th hit after the 4th
eighth of the previous measure and the second 64th of the
first eight to which the flam effect is to be introduced.
This however becomes noticable in low
metronome speeds. The actual notation of this in Drum
music sheets is the NWC equivelant of an accent note,
however this does not work.

Re: Drum Flams

Reply #1 –
Are you asking about flams, which really look like grace notes, or those that you said "look like nwc accents"which are really rolls? If you mean the first ones, then you can use real grace notes. If not, see my response on trills.

Re: Drum Flams

Reply #2 –
You can't use the grace notes feature because NWC steals time for the grace notes from the following note (often the way it is played on piano) but drum flams always steal from the preceeding note. If you use the grace note feature it will sound wrong but print correctly unless you put the grace note in the middle of a beam and then the beam gets broken up.