Get professional knowledge or quit, Appietus warns ‘YouTube sound engineers’

RENOWNED Sound Engineer and Music Producer, Appietus, is worried-sick. His uneasiness stems from what he calls the influx of self-taught sound engineers, who he accuses will gradually bring the Ghana music industry to its knees.

To him, if these amateur sound engineers, who claim they received tutorials from YouTube and other new media platforms, want to make any meaningful contribution to the Ghanaian music industry, they need to polish up their act by seeking professional training.

Speaking in an interview with Graphic Showbiz on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, Appietus, whose real name is Appiah Dankwah, revealed that Ghana’s music industry was facing a serious crisis due to these self-educated sound engineers, who were compromising the quality of sound production.

 The seasoned producer stressed that Ghana's music industry was struggling to make a mark on the global stage due to the subpar quality of sound production and urged the self-educated sound engineers to raise their game and strive for excellence rather than settling for mediocrity.

He said: “You have to understand sound engineering, the frequency range listeners can hear, the decibel range you can go, the dynamics and all the technicalities. You need to understand all these things. It's only in our industry that you find people saying, ‘Oh, I learnt sound engineering on YouTube”. (More articles: Indian social media influencer dies after falling into 300-foot valley while filming video,  Golden voices from the past, Whether we like it or not, Sarkodie is our Greatest Rapper – Nana Romeo)

“For you to become a medical doctor or a surgeon, you cannot go and learn it on YouTube. Nobody is going to lie down and say, okay, this is my stomach, operate on me because you learnt it on a social platform. But in Ghana, we have people saying Oh I learnt it on YouTube, so I know. Come on, please. These internet communities cannot teach you the real thing,” he disclosed.

According to him, “Works from these amateurs are a contributory factor to why most of our songs are not breaking the global market. 

“The international marketplace knows good quality so if it's low, they will not accept it. There’s something called industry standard in sound, if you do not have it, come on, they will just throw your music away.”