From Wall Street Journal

In addition to his work in visual art, Turow is an experienced studio drummer, composer, and drum teacher, who last year finished a one-year residency at UCSF Children's Hospital where he helped establish the UCSF Children's Hospital Music Program, which uses music to help reduce anxiety, depression, and physical pain in patients.



Turow has been drumming for 20 years and is educated in classical music, jazz, blues, and a range of African styles (afrobeat, highlife, soukous).

Tuning the Ceramic Drums:

The heads are heat-tunable; setting the drum in the sun or near any heat source will dry out the head and cause it to constrict. To tune the drum in less than 1 minute, you can use a heating-pad or hairdrier. To lower the pitch of the drum, simply place a damp cloth in the center of the head for a few seconds.

Replacing A Natural Skin Drum Head:

Replacing the head is fairly straight-forward if you want to or need to do that. It's quite likely you will never have to change the head, but if you do, it's not hard. Here's a quick explanation:
1. Buy an animal skin (calf or goat skin are easy to work with). I like drumfactorydirect.com to buy circular cut animal skins.
2. Buy 1 package of long zip ties (24" or 36" or 42") from home depot - they're available in the electronics section. A big hose clamp from a hardware store will also work.
3. Find some wood glue and an exacto knife or other sharp knife, and a piece of cardboard.
4. Soak the new drum head for 20 minutes. To remove the drum head to be replaced, or what's left of it, soak the drum upside down in some water for an hour and the head will just peel off, or just yank off the existing head, or use some scissors.
5. After you soak the head, pull it out and put it on a piece of cardboard. Take your drum and turn it upside down and place it in the center of the head.
6. Take your knife and make incisions in the head, 1cm wide, 1 inch out from the rim of the drum. The cuts should be 2 inches apart. Go around the whole drum making 1cm incisions every 2 inches or so. This doesn't have to be perfect.
7. Take the long zip tie and thread it through the holes like sowing - up and down, around the whole head until you reach where you started. Pull the head towards the square clasp end of the zip tie, and then spread the head evenly around the zip tie so the zip tie makes a kind of rim. You need to make sure that the zip tie is facing inward, so that it will close correctly.
8. If the head has dried out by this point, run some water over it and leave it in the water.
9. Take the wood glue and go around the rim of the drum with a 1/4" thick band of glue. Go slowly, and use your finger to spread the glue over the tip 1/2" of the rim.
10. Take the head, put it over the drum, close the clasp, and tighten it up. It should naturally slide down your conical drum and tighten itself. Take a second zip tie and put it above the first zip tie and crank it down. Make sure to get any wrinkles out of the head and really yank on it until it seems to be stretched. Each time you've gone around the drum yanking, try tightening the zip ties to continually get them tighter.
11. Let this dry overnight or until the drum is taught and sounds good.
12. Cut the zip ties with a scissors or wire clipper.
13. Take an exacto knife, scissors, or carpet cutter and cut away the excess skin, up to 1/2" below the rim. If you want to be more exact, put the drum down on a table with the head down and trace a line around it so you know where to cut. Be careful, the ceramic is very slippery. You can't scratch the piece with the exacto knife because it's surface is harder than the metal, so don't worry about it.
14. If there's extra skin stuck to the drum, take a damp cloth with some warm water and go around the areas that are stuck. If you scrub a little and let the water dissolve the glue, it will come off easily.

I will post a video soon to demonstrate the process. If you have any questions in the meantime, please e-mail or call me (Gabe Turow).

Current Music Projects:

This is a recent 80-minute CD of sleep music I wrote for the babies at UCSF Children's Hospital (10% of proceeds goes to the program):



This is a short album from King Baldwin, a rock band I formed recently with several musical friends:



This is a 4-track LP from my afrobeat (Fela Kuti-inspired Nigerian funk) band, Baba Ken and the Afrobeat Connexion (to hear the next song, just drag the player location indicator to the right):

After studying music at the Berklee College of Music and Religious Studies, Neuroscience, and Ethnomusicology at Stanford University, Turow did research at Stanford, where, as a Visiting Scholar in the Stanford Music Department and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), with the help of Jonathan Berger and Mike Gubman, he co-created and co-organized the Stanford Annual International Symposium Series on Music and the Brain (now going into its 6th year). The purpose of the symposium series was to highlight research on musical rhythm and the brain, the relationship between rhythmic music and the recruitment of attention, and music-based treatments for ADD, anxiety, depression, pain, and dementias. The symposium series was annualized following its second year with the help of the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts and the Hewlett Foundation.

After his work at Stanford, Turow was given the opportunity to co-direct and co-create the UCSF Children's Hospital Music Program with a $25,000 grant from Rock Against Cancer (RAC). Turow left after a year and half but the program is still running due to the generous support of the Music National Service who placed a music therapist in Turow's stead. The program raised $70,000 last year and is still in need of support if it is going to continue.

Turow recently finished co-editing and co-authoring a book on music and neuroscience called, The Rhythmic Brain: Music, Science and Clinical Implications (in publication), that was sponsored by the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCA), the Stanford Medical School, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. He is currently studying for a Music Therapy (MT-BC) and Neurologic Music Therapy certification (NMT).

About the Instruments/Artist's Statement:

After all of my work with the kids at the hospital, along with the research I did at Stanford, I was left with a profound awareness that human beings are very sensitive to music, and that rhythmic music, music with a good groove, can really make you feel good - that it releases chemicals in your brain and causes electromagentic states like those of people who are going for a run, or meditating, or are in any other type of flow- the effect is to reduce anxiety and depression, and evoke feelings of joy and happiness. This is all being supported by a wave of new neuroscience research going on.

Rhythmic music provides steady stimulation to the brain, and draws your attention to a single focus, and that is inherently calming- there's less new information for your brain to process, so it can relax a bit. That experience is usually pleasant.

So, in that light, playing the drums only gets more interesting. At the very least, you can see it as more than just a casual activity - that when you play for yourself, or other people, you are actually stabilizing yourself, neurologically, and making yourself, or someone else, feel a little better.

Visual art has all the same aspects to it. Except, in the case of visual art, because the final product is a thing, rather than an event happening in time, you can sit and stare at the final product, like you can experience a good groove. If the piece of visual art is interesting enough to draw you in, and hold your attention, it's like listening to a good piece of music.

So with the instruments on this site, you're seeing what is currently my end-game answer to what i've seen so far, in my personal life and my more intellectual life:

a. I'm trying to create objects that you can look at quietly, and that will offer real pleasure, and maybe give you some calm. The glazes I've been using, which all turn to glass during the last firing (which goes up to 2300 degrees), have extremely intricate textures, and if you get up close, you can see that the type of geometry involved is created naturally through chemical reactions in the glaze. I think it's really beautiful; but I've also been drawn to shiny things from a young age. Aldous Huxley actually writes about how we're all that way, at least as children, and it's one of those things that ties us all together.

b. I'm trying to make instruments where it's almost impossible to interact with them without experiencing at least some joy - the combination of the way the piece looks and sounds will make you a little happier.

That is what I'm going for. If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me. Thanks!

Gabe Turow
Owner, Director
www.StoneInstruments.com