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AIM/Skype: jimbo00000ooooo

updated: Tue Jun 24 2008
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I have enjoyed playing the guitar for a while.
Check out my original music at:
Church of the Dollar.com


Enjoy the following defunct bands featuring Daniel Rogers on rhythm guitar!
  • the Purple Ku
  • Traditional Matter

    		•  I am learning to play
    The Guqin


    Flash music tools:
    Chromatic Scale visualizations
    Chord progression plotter
    Play music online with the Pitchwheel
    12/8

    Some of my favorite music of the day:
    Captain Beefheart - so it turns out this guy is not only the most exciting vocalist around(8 octaves!) but also perhaps the single most significant influence in songwriting in the modern era. More significant than even the mighty Beatles, and I don't say that lightly: everybody is trying to sound like the Beatles, and I love their music, but Beefheart's is more raw, pure, more honest and true than anything out there. Frank Zappa played the fool a lot of the time, Philip Glass and John Cage are simply clowns, but this guy is the real deal. Odds are you have never heard any of his music. I would recommend you don't start with Trout Mask Replica, it'll certainly be too much. Warm up to it with Spotlight Kid/Clear Spot or Safe As Milk, then you'll be ready to enjoy Doc At The Radar Station and Bat Chain Puller. Captain Beefheart's style is stream-of-consciousness; he is not only a steller musician but incidentally is also the greatest beat poet ever to speak, so I think we can safely put the beat poetry genre to bed now. Thanks to my buddy Micah for turning me on to this and guiding me in the process of letting Beefheart's music rewire my brain so that I might enjoy it fully. I can't get these songs out of my head! Listen to "Ashtray Heart", "Steal Softly Thru Snow", "Big Eyed Beans From Venus" - there are a ton of gems in his catalog. All it takes is enough patience to listen to each song at least three times - once you do, you will be hooked for life, I guarantee it.
    Mr. Bungle - I've loved the depravity and energy of the clown album since high school, but I only just now heard "California" for the first time. It is an aural cartoon; I've never heard anything like it. The bridge 2:12 into "Vanity Fair" is an absolute knockout - the most intense musical waveforms I have ever perceived. It's like the song is somehow hyper-real, more real than reality in that exaggerated, conceptual cartoony way. They span at least 3 wildly disparate genres per song and utilize every possible instrument, sample and sound effect. Just go get the album and check out bunglefever.com.
    The Divine Comedy - a sublime and delicate songwriting force with a proclivity toward the major 7th, one of the most difficult tones to use effectively in my experience. I found out about them from Orbital's "Back to Mine" which includes the melodramatic "Lost Property". Pretty much every song on "Regeneration" is a well-formed gem. Good dynamics, great clarity, profound lyrics, "a divine Beatles bassline and a big old Beach Boys sound". They'll jerk a tear out of you eventually.
    King's X - likely one of the most underappreciated bands ever. A super-tight 3 piece, capable of bending time(see "We Were Born to be Loved"). They come about as close to the power groove of Pantera as any band I know, maybe being from Texas has something to do with it. The key aspects of their sound seem to be a super-thick guitar tone emphasizing the 7#9(Hendrix) chord, synchronization of the kick drum with power chords, and pushing the downbeat backward into the previous measure by an eighth(see "Shoes", "Complain"). Makes you wanna bang your head.
    Joe Satriani - a true musician and master of the guitar. That change at [2:39] into "Flying In a Blue Dream" is one of the most inspired moments of guitar I have heard. Seemed to be maturing a lot as a musician on "Strange Beautiful Music" - the first notes of "Oriental Melody" caught me right away. "The Traveler" is awesome - and the grainy, gritty tone from [5:29] to the very end around put me right into the old west. And the song "Engines Of Creation" - the riff from [2:37 to 2:45] channels the infinite beauty and grace of this entire planet through sound.
    Alice In Chains - They established a sound that is truly unique, and kept it going for 4 solid albums. Halfway through Sickman Layne's spooky 3 part harmonies and Jerry's dirty wah guitar mix perfectly to form the most bittersweet cocktail of depression. The main lick of Rain When I Die is a textbook wah wah riff - you owe it to yourself to pick up Dirt if you love wah guitar. 3:33 into Shame In You it all melts together and mellows out into their own unique flavor of blues. Masters of the tritone and the half step, they made the ugliest cadences work. Check out the delicious licks in God Am.
    Little Brother - Smooth flows over chill melodic beats, what's not to like? They seem to know how to pick a good sample.
    Chopin - a monumental intellect of music, I'm not sure any compositions have rivaled his since they were created. Better at ending a song than any I have ever heard.
    I particularly like the Butterfly, Suicide(Op.25 no.10, I named that one myself) and of course the magnificent Ocean Etude.
    Some skillful performers of his works:
    Orbital - The Hartnoll Brothers are true masters of the spacy musical feel - "In Sides" creates space. Their songwriting pushes into new space.
    Shakti - the transcendental riffs of John McLaughlin against the infinitely subtle Indian flavors of sitar and tabla... pure enlightenment.
    Prince - multiply talented, a true all-around star.
    Ella Fitzgerald - for my money, vocals don't get any better than Ella. She could sound like an innocent young schoolgirl, a debutante, a seductive woman and a wise old lady, or like any two of those at one time. Her simple, old style tracks provide a nice contrast to the intensity found in much of today's music.
    Down - possibly the heaviest metal band there ever was. Every track is foot-stomping nirvana.
    A Perfect Circle - the female counterpart to Tool. Somehow the juiciest, thickest, most feminine metal I've heard, and plenty heavy.
    Soundgarden - no one can match the subtlety of the heaviness of this band... using the III7 chords containing the b2 in "Holy Water"(@0:49 in the prechorus, "Another Monkey CIRcus freak...") - sublime.
    The Vocalists Shrine
    Frank Sinatra - the ultimate golden-throated crooner. I wish I sounded like him.
    Carcass - an explosion of musical intensity - the very epitome of hardness and heaviness in metal. There was never any better... Monographic text, a literary vex / The macabre perplexed, with reality meshed
    Steve Vai - quite possibly the best guitar athlete in the world
    Mahavishnu Orchestra - the stunning beauty of "Visions of the Emerald Beyond" has brought tears to my eyes. "Inner Mounting flame" is some of the most revolutionary music made ever.
    Tupac - had a voice like a smooth liquor.
    Notorious B.I.G. - my favorite rapper. Had a booming voice that commanded respect.
    Jerry Cantrell - Degradation Trip will bring you back to the nineties. R.I.P. Layne Staley - I can hear Jerry's grief in most every track.
    In Flames - Masters of the high art of symphonic metal. They use the minor sixth to give an almost hymnal quality to songs that are always relentlessly hard. Their guitar work is disciplined modality like a military operation.
    Pantera - Looking back on it, this was the hardest metal band ever to play. If you've heard them, you know. I saw them at Ozzfest in 1997 and didn't get closer than 100 yards to the stage because of the hellstorm of brutal ass kickers beating each other in front of me. Listen to the end of The Great Southern Trendkill(between that and Carcass' Necroticism you'll have the best of all metal right there) and you'll hear that by the last track, Dime and his bandmates had surpassed what anyone else on the planet had ever known about hard metal and simply kept on going right past what we thought was the end of a genre and into territories unknown. No one in the world sounds like Dimebag on guitar, no one ever has. You gave us all a pull, brother. Thank you so much for existing.

    Thanks to the following musical influences: 

    John McLaughlin
Mahavishnu Orchestra
Shakti
Remember Shakti
Talvin Singh
Amon Tobin
Prent Rodgers
Yoko Kanno

Miles Davis
John Coltrane
BB King
The Doors
Jimi Hendrix
Pink Floyd

Black Sabbath
Ozzy Osbourne
Led Zeppelin
ZZ Top
Van Halen
Guns N Roses
Rage Against The Machine
Soundgarden
Megadeth
Metallica
Mr. Bungle
Pantera
Down
Carcass
Entombed
Fear Factory

The Roots
Notorious BIG
Prince
George Clinton

DJ Keoki
Lords of Acid
NIN
Orbital
Radiohead


Type O Negative
Ugly Kid Joe
Virgos Merlot
White Zombie


    2Pac
311
777
A Perfect Circle
Aaliyah
Aerosmith
Alice In Chains
BT
Bad Brains
Beatles
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Bjork
Black Crowes
Borknagar
David Bowie
Johannes Brahms
Brownstone
Brutal Truth
Jerry Cantrell
Chemical Brothers
Eric Clapton
John Coltrane
Corrosion of Conformity
Common
Deep Forest
Dilated Peoples
Dimmu Borgir
Ella Fitzgerald
Eminem
Faith No More
Fat Joe
Fatboy Slim
Fishbone
Felix Mendelssohn
Frank Sinatra
Genitorturers
Gorillaz
Grateful Dead
Macy Gray
Groove Armada
Lauryn Hill
Ibrahim Ferrer
Buena Vista Social Club
Jeff Buckley
Geinoh Yamashirogumi
Patrick O'Hearn
Buckethead

    Infectious Organisms
Infected Mushroom
J-Live
Michael Jackson
Jamiroquai
Jethro Tull
Juno Reactor
KMFDM
Kay Gardner
Kelly Bell Band
Kyuss
Lenny Kravitz
Limp Bizkit
Lo Fidelity All Stars
MDFMK
Massive Attack
Master P
Dave Matthews
Messiah
Ministry
Moby
Modest Mouse
Morphine
Mos Def
Mozart
N.E.R.D.
Nas
OutKast
Ozric Tentacles
Praga Khan
Primus
Prodigy
Propagandhi
Puccini
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Republica
Rolling Stones
Joe Satriani
Sepultura
Sevendust
Shpongle
Sins of thy Beloved
Smashing Pumpkins
Sneaker Pimps
Steely Dan
Sting
Stone Temple Pilots
Superjoint Ritual
System of a Down
Tenacious D
The Crystal Method
Tool

    Special Pre-release section!!
    You didn't read this entire page, did you?
    bums-v0.51-192.mp3 - Sunday October 14th 2007 20:46