Hands down the hardest rudiment I ever had to learn to do. Inverts were nothing compared to these. Break it down and take it slow and build it up. Many times when we have trouble learning rudiments, it's because of a brain short-circuit or bad connection. To get over this we must tear down that bad bridge and start again and work to rebuild.

Remember to think about not what you are currently doing, but what your hands and muscles will have to do to play the rudiment.

I remember I tried for 4 months to play these damn things. I gave up and then three months later picked up the sticks to try again and vwooooom. Flam Accent Fighter Pilot. Sometimes they just click.

i learnd them slow then took them faster as i got them cleaner

Hmmm. I am somewhat surprised that people are citing flam accents as one of the hardest rudiments. For me, flam accents came really naturally with simple repetition. It's other rudiments I have a much harder time with! I guess it depends on the individual. It is one of the easiest rudiments for me. I consider any sort of invert a lot harder. So, I'd just keep practicing them over and over! Open/closed/open, and at constant tempos (w/ metronome) that you continually push higher when you can consistantly play a certain amount of them well at the given tempo.

EDIT:

Quote:

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When playing isolated flams, there should be virtually no upstroke to a grace note. But at when playing flam accents, the grace note of the flam is actually the middle of three taps. It's really impractical for the height of a grace note to be any different from the tap that precedes or follows it.

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If I may, I'd like to clarify what this person was saying... the grace note of the flam is the middle of a group of three notes ON THE SAME HAND. There is the main note of the flam on the other hand in the middle of those 3 notes on the original hand, and that IS a different height than the grace note. I try to keep the grace notes at about 1", and the main notes of the flams at whatever height the dynamics designate, usually accented.
Also, while I generally accent the main notes of the flams, I keep the other two notes low, and this helps prepare one hand for the subsequent grace note.

Do it how every rudiment should be played. Especially when you are learning it. Play it really really slow and bump up the tempo a few clicks every 5-10 minutes.

Cleaning up the rudiment is harder than learning it in my opinion. Getting that grace note to be a grace note and not a tap is a pain, Jeff Queen spent hours a day for weeks playing them painfully slowly just to get down the dynamics of it. Flam freaking Accents...what a rudiment. At least everything is easier after that.

Flam accents are no different from any other rudiment. You approach each the same. Break down what each hand plays. Perfect that. Slowly piece them together. Perfect that. Do everything WAY slower than you think you need to. Don't move up the met until it's perfect.