The Curiosity Podcast
We're curious about the topics you find here. Spirit, Earth, Heart centered conversations about the modern human experience. I'm naturally curious and am doing this podcast to explore my favorite topics.
The Curiosity Podcast
Sacred Fire Drum Clinic - 10 Day Intensive Workshop
"The Curiosity Podcast: Mastering the Drumming Techniques" (beginning) is a structured, ten-episode educational program led by instructor Chris Olds. This curriculum is engineered to provide a comprehensive technical framework for drummers of all levels. The series progresses logically from essential physical fundamentals and rhythmic literacy to advanced coordination and, finally, to sophisticated stylistic application across a range of genres. The ultimate goal is to cultivate not just technical proficiency, but also a deep and versatile musical literacy that empowers the modern drummer. The Moeller Technique is updated and expounded upon by the Alonso Garabaldi Rudimentary Jazz Method, and also the Terry Bozzio Foot and Hand Method of Modern Drumming. (stick/foot control). Add to this, Chris Olds’ method, and you have the core substance and foundation of the drumming methods taught here.
DrumKraft Workshops
The provided text details the curriculum of two distinct drumming programs: Chris Olds' "The Curiosity Podcast: Mastering the Drumming Techniques" and the accompanying "The Sacred Fire Drumming Intensive." The podcast curriculum is a comprehensive, ten-episode structure designed to take drummers from establishing a physical foundation—covering proper ergonomics and the efficiency of the Moeller Technique—to advanced skills, including limb independence and internalizing polyrhythms. The final episodes apply these technical skills to various genres, teaching specific patterns for Jazz, Funk, and Latin Styles. In contrast, "The Sacred Fire Drumming Intensive" is an immersive workshop centered on rigorous, skill-based hand drumming instruction with a core objective of fostering Deep Listening & Ensemble Connection to achieve a collective groove.
We believe every story has a layer you haven’t seen yet. [Podcast Name] peels back the curtain on [Subject Matter], exploring the forgotten corners of history and the human experience. Listen in and get lost.
So our mission today for you, whether you're a drummer who's hit a plateau or just a musician wanting to get a better handle on rhythm, is to pull out the core lessons from both of these worlds.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. From how you sit at the kit to the philosophy of rhythm itself. This is really a blueprint for mastery built on his, what, fifty plus years of playing and teaching?
SPEAKER_01:So where do we start? The foundation.
SPEAKER_00:It has to be the foundation. His whole philosophy, coming from his music ed degree, is that you don't start with fancy fills. You start with um physical efficiency, injury prevention. And this is a big one for him. Musical literacy.
SPEAKER_01:The very first lesson is just about how you and the drum kit meet. The physical interface.
SPEAKER_00:Right, the ergonomics. Before you even think about hitting something, you have to get your body aligned.
SPEAKER_01:So what are the absolute non-negotiables there to set yourself up for, you know, power, speed, all that good stuff?
SPEAKER_00:The biggest one, the one he really insists on, is your throne height, your seat.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, what about it?
SPEAKER_00:The angle behind your knee has to be 90 degrees or even wider. It can't be less.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of people just go by feel, right? Yeah. So why is that 90 degree rule so important?
SPEAKER_00:It's all about biomechanics. It's stability. If your knees are pointing up, so the angle is too sharp, your center of gravity gets shifted back.
SPEAKER_01:Ah, I see.
SPEAKER_00:And your leg muscles have to work just to hold you in place. But if the angle is wide, you use the natural weight of your body falling forward. It stabilizes everything, especially your bass drum foot, and you just don't get as tired.
SPEAKER_01:And that ties into symmetry, I imagine.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Your base drum pedal and your hi-hat pedal, they have to be a mirror image, symmetrical angles, symmetrical positions.
SPEAKER_01:Because otherwise your body starts compensating.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you get these tiny little tensions that you don't even notice. But over time, that becomes the thing that holds back your speed and your coordination. It's a bottleneck.
SPEAKER_01:So once your body is set, then we get to the language of drumming.
SPEAKER_00:The rudiments. The rudiments, he calls them your rhythmic language, which I love. And he really zeroes in on what he calls the tier one rudiments. These are your single stroke roll, double stroke roll, multiple bounce, um, single paradiddle, flam, and drag.
SPEAKER_01:Why those six?
SPEAKER_00:Because they cover all the essential food groups, so to speak. You get speed from singles, texture from doubles, and then the paradiddles and flams. That's all about coordination and moving accents around. They train your hands for basically any situation.
SPEAKER_01:But the thing that really elevates his approach, the thing he calls the professional mandate, is tying all of this to reading music.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, absolutely. The literacy mandate. He talks about learning to sight read from the great Al Garibaldi.
SPEAKER_01:A jazz drummer.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And the lesson was, you know, your technical chops will get you an audition, but being able to read music is what gets you hired.
SPEAKER_01:So you're not just learning patterns, you're learning to read instructions.
SPEAKER_00:You're becoming a complete musician. You can walk into a studio, they can hand you a chart, and you can play. That's the goal.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so that solid foundation then unlocks the next big thing, which lots of people have heard of, but maybe don't fully grasp. The Mauler technique.
SPEAKER_00:The secret weapon.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And it really is all about efficiency. It's the answer to hitting a wall with your speed or your endurance.
SPEAKER_01:Because it's not just about your wrists.
SPEAKER_00:No, not at all. It uses the whole arm. Your wrist gives you the uh initial momentum, the forearm helps with this kind of sweeping motion, and then your fingers control the little taps after. All that energy gets distributed so no single muscle group gets exhausted.
SPEAKER_01:Let's break down the three parts of it again.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So you've got the full stroke, that's the big whipping motion up and down. It's what gives you that natural rebound from the drum. Okay. Then you have the downstroke, that's a crisp accent, but the key is that it stops the stick low to the head, ready for the next soft note.
SPEAKER_01:And that soft note is?
SPEAKER_00:The tap stroke. And that's the magic. It's just a light touch that uses the rebound energy, the full stroke already created. So it takes almost no effort. It's like a cycle.
SPEAKER_01:A whip-like motion.
SPEAKER_00:That's a perfect way to put it. It's how you get that seamless, clean, fast playing without tensing up.
SPEAKER_01:And the sources mention that this is often paired with the traditional grip. Why is that combo so effective?
SPEAKER_00:It's all about nuance, especially for things like jazz. With the traditional grip where your non-dominant hand is underhand, you get incredible control over the sideways motion of the stick. Which is good for subtle things like press rolls, quiet buzzes, and especially those little ghost notes that give a groove its texture. So Mahler gives you the power, traditional grip gives you the finesse.
SPEAKER_01:Alright, so we've got the hand sorted. Now we move to the flock. Internalizing time.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. This is about getting past that tendency to, you know, rush when you're excited or drag when a fill is tricky. You have to get rid of that.
SPEAKER_01:And this means using a metronome in ways that are, well, they sound kind of brutal.
SPEAKER_00:They're designed to be. They are practice hacks designed to break your dependency on hearing that click, click, click all the time.
SPEAKER_01:So what's the first hack?
SPEAKER_00:Quarter the tempo. So if you're practicing something at say 120 beats per minute, you set the metronome to 30.
SPEAKER_01:So it only clicks on beat one of every bar.
SPEAKER_00:Or you could set it to 60. So it's on beats one and three. Either way, you have to fill in all that silence yourself. If you rush even a tiny bit, you'll be way off when that next click comes. It really forces you to be accountable for your own time.
SPEAKER_01:And the second one is even more mind-bending.
SPEAKER_00:Displacing the click. This is huge for developing a great funk feel. You set the metronome to click on the E or the A of the beat.
SPEAKER_01:So on the 16th note subdivisions, not the main pulse.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. It completely throws off your brain's expectation of where one is. You have to actively place your downbeats around that displaced click. It gives you insane control over your micro timing.
SPEAKER_01:And the final part of this puzzle is the uh ultimate truth serum.
SPEAKER_00:It is the self-assessment feedback loop. Simple idea, but so powerful. Record yourself practicing. But, and this is the most important part. Listen back to it without the metronome playing. Just your raw performance.
SPEAKER_01:Because your brain will trick you in the moment.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, 100%. It smooths over the little inconsistencies while you're playing. But when you listen back objectively, you hear every single little push and pull. It's the only way to really know where you need to improve.
SPEAKER_01:Once that internal clock is solid, you can get into some serious coordination, tying the rudiments to your feet.
SPEAKER_00:This is what he calls the supercharger: hand foot combinations. It's where you start integrating those sticking patterns with your bass drum and hi-hat. He pulls from guys like uh Dave Weckle with his triplet ideas.
SPEAKER_01:And this is what unlocks those huge dynamic fills you hear from the pros.
SPEAKER_00:That's it. You just can't play that stuff with your hands alone. This leads right into the really complex stuff, like polyrhythms.
SPEAKER_01:Specifically the two against three relationship. Quarter notes against triplets.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And that's so tough mentally because your brain is trying to process two different rhythms at once. The key technique here is to give yourself an anchor.
SPEAKER_01:A foot ostinato.
SPEAKER_00:A foot ostinato. Just a simple repeating pattern on your bass drum or hi-hat. It holds down the fort rhythmically while your hands get to do the complex shifting stuff on top.
SPEAKER_01:And this is where we get that amazing connection to the other curriculum, the sacred fire intensive.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, this is so cool. He uses nature to help students feel the polywhythm, not just understand it mathematically. The intensive is at Stargazer Ranch in New Mexico. He has the participants go out at night and just look at the stars.
SPEAKER_01:Stare into the cosmos.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And the idea is that the vastness, the complex but totally stable patterns in the night sky, it helps you internalize that feeling of two different steady cycles happening at the same time. It makes an abstract concept feel real and embodied.
SPEAKER_01:That's a beautiful way to teach it. So with all these foundations in place, now we can talk about style.
SPEAKER_00:Now we can apply it. And this is where his decades of playing everything from rock to jazz to Latin really comes in. It's about translating the techniques.
SPEAKER_01:So for jazz, what are the essentials?
SPEAKER_00:It's all about subtlety. You need that triplet-based swing ride cymbal pattern to feel amazing. And that's where that mahler and traditional grip combo really shines. It gives you the finesse.
SPEAKER_01:And the bass drum is a totally different role.
SPEAKER_00:Completely different. You have to learn to feather the bass drum. That means playing really soft quarter notes on all four beats. It drives the band, but you can't be loud. If you're too loud, you just kill the feel of the upright bass.
SPEAKER_01:It's about dynamic control.
SPEAKER_00:Incredible dynamic control. And then you have things like the Blakey shuffle, which combines that swing rye with a shuffling motion on the snare. That's a classic jazz pocket.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, let's switch gears. Funk.
SPEAKER_00:Funk is all about tightness and clarity. The number one rule is linear playing.
SPEAKER_01:Meaning no two limbs hit at the same time.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Makes every single note pop. It's how you get those complex 16th note patterns to sound so clean and articulate. You also need really precise, syncopated bass drum hits, and of course, a healthy dose of ghost note.
SPEAKER_01:Those little soft notes that fill in the gaps.
SPEAKER_00:They add the texture, they add the forward motion, they're the secret sauce.
SPEAKER_01:But doesn't focusing on linear playing make the groove sound thin?
SPEAKER_00:That's the challenge, right? You have to execute all those ghost notes and syncopations fast enough that you create a sense of density, but without anything actually overlapping and sounding muddy, it all comes back to that displaced click practice.
SPEAKER_01:It all connects. Okay, final style. Latin rhythms.
SPEAKER_00:And here, everything, I mean everything, starts with one thing: the clavet. The clave. It's the structural backbone. And you have to know the difference between sun clave and rumba clave, and not just the pattern, but how they function.
SPEAKER_01:One's for Mombo, one's for Guaguanko.
SPEAKER_00:Right, and they feel different. The whole ensemble's rhythm is built around where the weight of that clave pattern falls, and then you learn to adapt the hand drum parts, like the cascara rhythm to the hi-hat or the rim of the snare. And you've got to do that while holding down the clave and a bass drum pattern. It requires uh total limb independence.
SPEAKER_01:This brings us to the final, really deep part of this: the philosophy of longevity from the sacred fire intensive. This fusion of intensity and serenity.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, why is taking a break part of the curriculum? It's about neural consolidation. Your brain needs downtime to actually process and internalize all that intense physical work.
SPEAKER_01:So the rest is just as important as the practice.
SPEAKER_00:It's mandatory. That connection with nature, the creative exploration, it prevents burnout, it refills the tank so you can go back and work hard again.
SPEAKER_01:The syllabus even lists a quiet walk. How does walking in silence teach you to play the drums?
SPEAKER_00:Because the end goal is to have a deep sense of connection with the other musicians in an ensemble. And you can't do that if you're not a profound listener.
SPEAKER_01:I see.
SPEAKER_00:The quiet walk is a listening exercise. If you can't tune in to the subtle sounds of the environment around you, how are you going to hear the nuances of a bass player, a guitarist, and a singer all at once while you're playing? It's about training your awareness.
SPEAKER_01:So to round out the purely technical side, we have the last step: tuning the instrument itself.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Treating the kit like a musical instrument, not just a bunch of things to hit. He teaches tuning the toms to specific musical intervals.
SPEAKER_01:Like perfect fourths or major thirds.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so the whole kit sounds harmonically pleasing together. And there's a key technical trick for getting a great sound. Which is tuning the resonant head, the bottom one, to a higher pitch than the batter head you hit on top.
SPEAKER_01:Why higher?
SPEAKER_00:That pitch difference makes the column of air inside the drum vibrate more efficiently. It gives the drum more punch, more clarity, and a much longer, purer sustain. Makes the drum sing.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. We have covered a huge amount of ground today. I mean, started with making sure the angle of your knee is right, went through the whip of the molar technique, displacing metronome clicks all the way to stargazing to understand polyrhythms and tuning your toms to musical intervals.
SPEAKER_00:It's an incredibly complete system. And I think the big lesson from both the podcast series and the intensive is that the technical rigor, the molar, the metronome work, that stuff will only get you so far. Right. Real mastery also requires that deep internal stability, that profound ability to listen. You have to merge the science of drumming with the um holistic awareness you get from really connecting with the music and the people you're playing with?
SPEAKER_01:There's that great line from the Sacred Fire philosophy that the profound silence between the drum beats is as important as the notes themselves. So maybe here's a final thought for you to take away.
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