music

Rocking Out with the Promega Band: Major Groove!

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva
Promega employees playing with the band Major Groove
A group of Promega employees rehearses their set for the Employee Recognition Meeting reception

Have you ever heard Guns ‘n’ Roses and Lizzo in the same concert?

When the Promega employee band Major Groove takes the stage, you never know what they might play!

The Promega band started with a handful of employees in 2006 and has grown to include more than 50 active musicians. Today, they play at company meetings, picnics, art shows and much more.

“During my interview process, I was sent a list of links to learn more about Promega. I was like, “Hold the phone! This company has a band!” says Kathryn Sauter, a Business Analyst on the Global Logistics team. “I never thought I’d have an opportunity to participate in a musical extracurricular activity at a place where I work. Promega immediately shot to the top of my list.”

Continue reading “Rocking Out with the Promega Band: Major Groove!”

Promega Employees Find Their Muse in Company Band

Posted on by Karen Burkhartzmeyer
Becky Guy (keyboard), Randy Dimond (left), Eric Vincent (Trombone) play for the Promega Employee Recognition Meeting as part of Lead Generation.
Becky Guy (keyboard), Randy Dimond (left), Eric Vincent (Trombone) play for the Promega Employee Recognition Meeting as part of Lead Generation (now Major Groove).

Musicians wait onstage as the sound tech adjusts the cables around them. He signals “OK” and runs back through the seats of the empty auditorium to the mixing board. The musicians all dressed in black, instruments in hand, prepare to play. Four sharp whacks from the drummer’s sticks and music fills the space. Horns, keyboards, electric guitar, bass, and harmonica back singers as they belt out the upbeat earworm Drive It Like You Stole It. They sound great and make it look pretty effortless too, which is why it’s hard to believe these “rock stars” are also scientists, marketers, IT specialists, lawyers, you name it, who make up the Promega employee band, Lead Generation, known now as “Major Groove”.

“Lead Generation is just one of the many opportunities at Promega that make it truly unique,” says Kris Zimmerman, a research scientist who sings and plays trumpet with the band. “Any kind of expression of creativity can help you to have different perspectives and be a better problem solver. Fostering an environment where collaboration and creativity are rewarded really helps to create a sense of belonging, and creates a vibe of excitement that you don’t find just anywhere. Plus how cool is it to tell people that you play in a band? At work?”

Continue reading “Promega Employees Find Their Muse in Company Band”

Not Music to Everyone’s Ears

Posted on by Anupama Gopalakrishnan

iStock_000016543302SmallWhen my son was about 2 years old, he commented that the jingles “Twinkle twinkle little star” and “alphabet song” had the same musical notation. While I do not think I am tone deaf and I do appreciate music, I had not made the connection in all these years.  Music appreciation is perhaps one of the most subjective and controversial topics. For some people, appreciating music involves understanding the technical nuances and critically evaluating artist’s mastery over the art, and for some of us, it is about simply enjoying the patterns and rhythms. While one might claim that they enjoy all kinds of music, for most of us, only certain kinds of music elicit a deeper appreciation, emotive experience and pleasure. Our music preferences are molded by exposure, cultural diversities and to some extent, mood. Music is extremely varied, and listing the kinds of music could fill pages. Arguing one kind of music is better than other is as like saying one color is better than the other.

So, what biological purpose does music serve? Continue reading “Not Music to Everyone’s Ears”

Music and the Brain: A Fun Friday Find

Posted on by Michele Arduengo, PhD

Notes and Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus is a great discussion from World Science Fair 2009. Have you ever been driving along listening to the radio and suddenly a song plays and transports you to a different time or place? Have you ever wondered at the way music stirs your memories and emotion? Or have you ever stopped to think about how music, in its admittedly different forms, has been an integral part human of culture for as far back as we can study? Does music speak a particular primordial language that we all understand?

In this presentation Bobby McFerrin and three neuroscientists discuss the way the brain gets involved in music–the listening, physicality, participation and emotion. Essentially, music is a “whole nervous system activity”, involving many parts of the central nervous system that function nearly simultaneously. At one point in the talk pitch, tambre and rhythm defined and demonstrated. The researchers point out that certain intervals in music such as the minor third are prevalent in speech associated with negative emotions, but that no positive emotions are associated universally with a particular pitch.

The link to the full length presentation is here:Notes and Neurons.

But for fun today, get your whole brain involved and join Bobby McFerrin in this demonstration of the universality of the pentatonic scale.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk&w=560&h=315]

3 Ways to Reduce Your Stress Today

Posted on by Becca McKnight

Turkeys, cookies, family, presents, travel, stress. The holiday season is fast approaching and with the joy comes stress. Here are three things you can do today (or any day) to help. Continue reading “3 Ways to Reduce Your Stress Today”

The Makings Of A Cerebral Music Decoder

Posted on by Robert Deyes

A Review Of Daniel Levitin’s This Is Your Brain On Music

ISBN: 978-0-452-28852-2

Physicist Emerson Pugh once quipped, “if the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t” [1]. In his book This Is Your Brain On Music neuroscientist Daniel Levitin notes how the number of ways that brain neurons can connect is so vast that we will never fully comprehend all the thought processes that we are capable of.

In recent years, mapping techniques have revealed a lot about the functional regions of the brain. Wernicke’s area is responsible for language processing, the motor cortex for physical movement and frontal lobes for generating personalities. Both encephalography and MRI have given us key spatial-temporal data about brain function in these regions. But we also find that activities such as listening to music contravene such a simplistic compartmentalization.

In fact the perception of pitch, tempo, the emotions invoked by a piece of music and the lyrics of a song all use different parts of the brain albeit simultaneously. Levitin repeatedly emphasizes the multi-faceted aspects of the music ‘experience’ noting how a, “precision choreography of neurochemical release and uptake” leads to our appreciation of music. The brain is thus a massively parallel device, capable of carrying out several different tasks at once.

Continue reading “The Makings Of A Cerebral Music Decoder”

Odyssey of a Grad Student and the Playlist that Paved the Way

Posted on by Karen Reece

Grad school is no walk in the park. Whether the topic is English or Astrophysics, most grad students would agree that the journey to the coveted PhD can simply be described as “hard”- academically, financially, mentally. It is very important to have an outlet for the associated stress such as a hobby or exercise. My outlet was music. Music is very important in my life. It is so important that most people close to me have their own soundtrack that plays in my head when I think of them. Needless to say, music played a big part in saving my sanity during my 7.5 years in grad school. As time went on, there were several songs that marked important milestones and emotions I experienced along the way. When I defended my thesis, I decided to leave the department with a musical story of how I made it through. I created a compilation CD of all these songs to share with the department and any other struggling grad students I encountered. The CD has a custom label featuring the structure of the protein I studied, cardiac troponin C.

In this blog, I will share with you that playlist, entitled “Odyssey of a Grad Student,” and a description of the significance of each track. You can listen to all but one* of the songs on YouTube (http://youtu.be/8qrriKcwvlY). Click the link and listen as you read along. Continue reading “Odyssey of a Grad Student and the Playlist that Paved the Way”

Don’t Forget the Music

Posted on by Sara Klink

Many people in the United States of America will be celebrating the country’s Independence Day by gathering with family, grilling and consuming food, and watching a Chinese invention explode overhead in many shapes and colors. I am partial to the ones my family calls boomers consisting of a small circular white flash of light and an explosion of sound that vibrates my chest.

The American Automobile Association (AAA) predicts that 32.8 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles from home over the July 4th weekend; 84% of those will travel by auto. Continue reading “Don’t Forget the Music”