There’s nothing like bad sound- Fredyma

SOMETIMES, we listen to music and the sound is so bad leaving people wondering where that may be coming from and often blaming the artiste. Wrong!

Sound Engineer Fred Kyei-Mensah, popularly known as Fredyma, opines that there is nothing like bad sound as far as he is concerned but rather, there are bad pieces of equipment.

Fredyma made this submission in an interview with Graphic Showbiz on Monday, May 1, saying, “My sister, in my experience, I don’t know anything as bad sound but we have bad equipment, when you go to any village for a funeral and they are playing Kojo Antwi’s song, for example, definitely if the speakers are not good, you won’t enjoy the song.

 “For instance, we have Enwomkro (traditional music), which is sometimes played at engagements, funerals, etc. The sound of these recordings would be different from, for example, Kojo Antwi‘s song, which is recorded in a studio. So a listener of Enwomkro will prefer that kind of sound to any other because it is very authentic,” he explained.

Fredyma has trained a lot of people in his line of work and he delved a bit into that.

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“The last time I checked my list, I had trained about 65 sound engineers from Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, South Africa and Liberia.

“During the Liberia civil war, most of its nationals sought refuge in Ghana and I trained those who came to me in my studio. That is from 1995 till when Ellen Sirleaf Johnson became President. Most of them have returned to Liberia while others have moved to other parts of the world.

“Locally, I am talking of the likes of Appietus, Jay Q, Bishop Mantey and Sammy Sackey, among others. When it comes to music too, I have recorded for musicians such as Celestine Donkor, Ohemaa Mercy, Samini, Reggie Zippy, Ofori Amponsah, the late Daasebre Gyamenah who I discovered, among others,” he said.

Giving his views on the current crop of musicians, Fredyma said there was a generational gap in terms of listenership or how people consume music.

“The population of the youth is very big when it comes to the consumption of music and if you look at it carefully, you can tell that they prefer the current crop of musicians.

 “In terms of their artistic content or the kind of music they make, the young musicians can flow with the love songs, Afrobeats, etc. Afrobeats is just snippets of Highlife devoid of horns and other instruments but that goes down very well with the youth.