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01.10.2013 Interviews

“Quality Recording Is Now Expensive Because...”—George Forest

By Samuel A. Baah, Flex Newspaper
GEORGE FORESTGEORGE FOREST
01.10.2013 LISTEN

A good of number of people in our music industry especially those in the highlife world are complaining that recording highlife songs is now expensive than before, therefore their inability to record more highlife songs for their followers.

Last last week in edition 257 of your favourite Flex newspaper, prolific highlife artiste Adolf Tagoe put it in another context where he added that highlife is a difficult genre. This topic provoked a discussion on Channel R`s Total Entertainment and popular Kumasi based sound engineer George Forest was called for his views as an industry player and the way forward.

During the interview, he stated categorically clear that it needs to happen as such because highlife music cannot be recorded with only computers like some engineers are doing. Unfortunately, because of the processes it goes through, it makes the recording a little expensive. In our last interview with another highly respected highlife artiste in Ghana Oheneba Kissi, he also revealed that he is currently about to release a single track for his fans because the industry has changed.

He added 'the times have changed therefore I also need to change. These days people don't buy albums so I have decided to also follow that trend by releasing singles. Moreover, it is now expensive to record highlife albums so if you are not sure of the sales, then the best one can do is to release singles to keep you relevant in the industry' Oheneba Kissi is on record to have told your most authoritative Flex newspaper in an interview.

Sound engineer George Forest who is known with some hit gospel tracks as well as highlife hit songs like Nana Acheampong`s 'anka ebeye den na aye wo ya' explains why recording highlife songs might come across as being expensive. 'It is just normal that a highlife song will be expensive because so many people work on the song and they all need to be paid. For instance, you might need to bring on board professional guitarist, basist, saxophonist and even sometimes extra people to contribute on the album to make it rich. Even these days, some of the gospel songs need these enhancements as well therefore making all sorts of recording expensive. It can only be cheap if you want to do computer recording which I think is not what some people like us want to be doing' George Forest told Adu Boahene: host of Channel R 205 Total Entertainment on 92.7.

Musicians who want quality recording should therefore check this because no quality recording in the game will be cheaper again.

Samuel A. Baah

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