Blog Post: 9scape

SL resident iconolith Taggart and RL participant Christen Bouffard (by day, an instructional designer for UAF who spends a disproportionate amount of time exploring SL from an educational perspective; by night a pie loving shape-changer) gave me a nice "shout out" on her 9scape blog and gave the links to Second Life (That's Where I Want To Be) and Dear Linden, Dear Linden. Be sure and take a look at her blogs.

Donburi on iLike!

I was just googling myself one day (boy, that sounds dirty, doesn't it?) and ran across a hit on iLike. Much to my surpise there is a listing for Niko Donburi. That's pretty cool. Someone called Robbiet480 has, as of this date, listened to Second Life (That's Where I Want To Be) 20 times!

I am going to do some more digging into this Robbiet480 person who obviously has great taste!

Dear Linden, Dear Linden on Secondcast

The Secondcast 1 year anniversary show begins with Dear Linden, Dear Linden. It will be interesting to see what type of attention this will attract. Perhaps the SLCC2007 music selection folks will happen to listen to it and think, "damn, we've got to have this guy play as one of the chosen five..."

Gig: The Cafe

I had a great time performing at the Cafe in Barcelona last nite. If you have not seen that sim then you definitely need to stop by and check it out. It was also the first time I have played for an SL audience that had a significant number of non-English speakers. It certainly made following the chat a bit more difficult!

Thanks to the following for their contributions: Liam Serf, Jacobi Haskell, Tami Lyne, Zann Canto, Maximillian Desoto, Kent Diplomat, Sean Cinquetti, Flameheart Sol, Kelly Young , Lovely Encore , Eponymous Drake and the ever generous Circe Broom !

Gig: Artropolis

Niko Donburi plays Live at Artropolis 02, originally uploaded by Pathfinder Linden.

Here is Pathfinder over on the left. Is that a frog? Lizard? I'd best check his profile and see. If someone knows, put it in the comments... please!

Gig: Artropolis

Niko Donburi plays Live at Artropolis 03, originally uploaded by Pathfinder Linden.

I played the Artropolis Sim opening at the Mandel'Brats and Brew stage yesterday. Artropolis is the only artist colony in SL that supports all the arts: Art, Music, Poetry, and Theater. Esch Snoats did the building of the sim and it looks great. I think Filthy Fluno runs the place.

Before the gig I had a bit of trouble TPing into the sim as it was full. I thought I might end up ghost streaming the gig but fortunately someone got a Linden to lift the AV cap. Or perhaps someone else got booted out of SL and I happened to push the button at the right time!

A funny story: I was just getting into the set and half-way through Dear Linden, Dear Linden when Pathfinder Linden strolls in and stands right up by the stage. As best I could tell, his AV is an amphibian of some sorts. Then he hops up, only to get hit in the head by the ceiling fan. It was quite hilarious. I actually stopped playing and had to restart the song. Pathfinder has posted more photos he took over on Flickr so take a look....

Who is Niko Donburi anyway?

Hi.

Suffice to say if you've read this far, you must be interested in finding out more about me.

I'm basically a songwriter. A man, a guitar and a pen, as the saying goes.

Well, actually, I made that last bit up. There isn't such a saying. Or at least I don't think so. [Note to someone: please google that and let me know if there is.]

But, in essence, that is what I do. Think of some words, find some notes that fit (or vice versa) and then try and tell a story.

To me, the perfect song is one that you cannot stop thinking about.

Perhaps it has a catchy chorus that flutters in your head. Maybe it paints a story so vivid that you could swear that it was about you. Or maybe it simply causes you to press "play" one more time. These are the songs I try to write.

It would be a lie, of course, to tell you that every one of my songs is "perfect." In fact, I have a box full of cassette tapes, minidiscs and CD-ROMS as proof that most of my songs aren't. But I keep trying. And once in a while, sometimes once every couple of years, I'll get one right.

In RL I have spent many years living, traveling and playing music around the world. I have played clubs in Japan, restaurants in Indonesia and busked in the streets of London. I have studied songwriting formally at National Guitar Summer Workshops and informally by listening, listening, listening to music. Mostly, however, I have simply written songs. I'm realistic enough to realize that I'd never be able to make a living off of whatever songwriting talent I had, so I just write them because they need to be written.

These days I limit my performances to Second Life. It provides me with the opportunity to play my songs for people around the world without having to leave my home. I never enjoyed going to a coffee bar and trying to be heard over the espresso machine. Audience members rarely listened to the words, nor couldn't if they wanted to. Add to it my general reluctance to actually sing in front of people and you can see why performing in a virtual world would appeal to me.

Please check out some of the other links found on the main page. Feel free to IM me in-world or check out my SLProfile.

By the way, all songs posted here are:





This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

I also compose ambient electronica under the name nikorasu. You can stream or download my CD "Music for Unseen Films" here and the soundtrack to my machinima collection, "Twisted Prim," should be up soon.