Antonow

You need to literally get the rhythm down and everything else comes. Plunk, kerplunk, plunk. I think I did that for about 3 or four hours over the course of a week and then the muscle memory never leaves. The left hand has a few tricks but if you’ve had some experience with a guitar you’ll have no problem. This is a garage instrument—you need to practice in isolation or people will go mad. Good for those that enjoy being alone. Seriously.

If you’re scrappy and you can call in some favors, this doesn’t need to cost a fortune. Spent about $2,000 and recorded, mastered, and packaged a CD that’s sold about 8,000 copies. My recommendations are to get all the content in order (practice, practice) so that you can do the thing in a few takes as possible. Time in the studio should be intense but limited. In this case, two days (5 hours each) netted a remarkably good recording—more because of the artist than anything else. He became poet laureate of the U.S. about 5 years later. http://www.bestcigarette.us

There aren’t to many under-rated cities in the world, but this is one of them.