NDN Soul-Funk Saga Pt. 2

From Mwalim's Producer Journal:

I was at the All Access Music Conference in August of 2012 and one of the things that struck me was
this: as a producer in a room full of music producers, why is it a novelty that I produce real bands and real band recordings? The music business migrated to an electronica, direct input production system in the 1990's. As I sat at the conference and listened to the interviews with the top producers of today, who all worked off of a single beat machine and sampler, it was proof positive that popular music had de-evolved.  As the panelists listened to my tracks, most were impressed with the fact that I had real band recordings in with my electronic works; while some felt that I was doing 'meaningless production work' and should have sampled and looped the instruments.

Fast forward to when it came time to producing a recording for The GROOVALOTTOS, it became time to throw the lessons learned from working in the music industry in New York out of the window, and make an album the actually captured the magical essence of the band, over a bland, sterile and predictable cookie-cutter record as the industry requires. To make this album I had to reach back into an older bag of tricks...  Trying to figure out how to approach recording this song is the trick. I'm going to have to skip over every rule that the industry tried to teach me ten years ago about the 'new sound'. For one thing, we're not making a pop  record. Drum machines, samplers and beat machines are not the root of this project. 

I decided to share my journal from producing the album in the hopes that it might inspire other bands and producers to return to creating recordings as opposed to making them. A basic blue-print to making a commercially viable, band recording. QuestLove, Spike Rebel and I should not be the only Soul/Urban/ R&B producers under 50 who know how to do this... Perhaps these notes will be another way for The GROOVALOTTOS to make the musical world more interesting. So now, onto the process...