Dominique BLANC-FRANCARD
I had the great privilege of having a sound engineer father.During my early childhood, instead of playing with an electric railway, I learned to do edits on a big Tolana monophonic tape recorder.
My brother Patrice was speaking into a black Melodium 55A microphone,(he was already rehearsing for his future job ...) After, we listened to our recordings playing the tape backwards and we thought that we had discovered the secret language of Martians.
It was 1955.Later I learned music, because I admit that the studies seemed boring.
Our best friend played slide trombone,he lived on the 2nd floor,we on the 5th, and we jammed through the open windows, which was charming our neighboors.Specially when they were listening to my first trumpet scales...On the evening, we were three on a old beatup scooter to go listen to unknown geniuses in the jazz clubs of St Germain des Prés.
In 1958,I had a dream:I wanted to become a movie director.I was fascinated by the movie cameras, then television cameras, with their large viewfinder in black and white and their 4 lenses turret... I read all books.No technical term had any secret for me.
Close-up, wide angle,pan, edits, travelling, the American shot, I was "incollable".The only problem was the need to enter the IDHEC,the French Cinema Institute and saw that my attendance at school, I quickly understood that I would never have the chance to be graduated .. Towards 1959, I learned the tenor banjo, very New Orleans style, and then the guitar, very Django style , and one day of 1960 I heard a radio for the first single by a rock band called "Les Chaussettes noires." They, or rather Eddy Mitchell, sang "You talk too much".
It was a flash. I shall be a rock guitarist . Despair in the family, my brother treats me of renegade because I do not listen any more to Charlie Parker nor Thelonious Monk. But this music is of my generation (I am 16 years old) and the lyrics are in French. After several meetings, I meet myself in a rock/twist band set up by the record company Decca, named " Les Pingouins " and I discover with bewilderment recording studios.
A technician in a white blouse and smoking a pipe asks me gently, but firmly to drop the level of my Vox AC30 because it distorts ,and promised me to use an horrible natural reverb instead of my Dynacord Echo tape machine because of the noise. ... This is the beginning of the war.
I am aware of the gap between the "technical side" and the "music side" the one which makes you ashame when you listen your record for the first time at home .I think this is the day that I decided that I should understand how it work, just to be able to get the rehearsals sound.
In 1962, rock bizness goes wrong, all the groups dissolve and solo singers emerge.The gigs are scarce and my father tells me he met someone who is looking for a sound engineer for a small studio he has just opened in Paris.And therefore advises me to move quickly to try to have the job.Explaining to me that the equipment is the same as the one with which I sought the secret language of the Mars for weeks, and therefore, I could very well be one.
This was my first job.I shall never know how to thank my father to have push me that day because I stayed 7 years in this studio where I learned my basics . I saw technology explode, moving from mono to stereo, from 2 to 3 and 4 to 8 tracks . I've been obliged to resume electronics classes because I had each year to build from my hands and with a simple drill and a soldering iron, the recording desk of the following season... I recorded everything that can be done on earth as different music, from jazz to salsa through realistic songs, operetta, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese folk, I also recorded soundtracks for theaters, skating rinks, strip-tease dancers, Esperanto classes in which there were 200 to 300 edits, and after a few years, I finally register when even my first commercial album, which became a collector, "Gong"from Daevid Allen.
We are in 1969.We start to feel strange smells of plants, the length of songs lengthens accordingly and the Pop music is born.
Through a good friend and excellent jazz producer,Pierre Lattes,I met Michel Magne at the Chateau d'Herouville,delirious place near Pontoise in which he has just built a 8 tracks recording studio . He asked me to come and work for him.After few weeks hesitating, I left my previous job and I go.During the three years spent in this exhausting and exciting adventure, I had the chance to meet, admire and record international artists such as Pink Floyd, Elton John, David Bowie, Cat Stevens, T. Rex, brilliant producers as Paul Samwell-Smith, Gus Dudgeon and Tony Visconti, who finally showed to me what a true sound rock'n'roll is.
I made my first and only solo album, at Barclay records, "Ailleurs" in which I played almost all instruments.
A real story, Hérouville, the first French studio that managed to make known throughout the world. Even today, when one speaks of French recording studios to the British or the Americans, the only name that comes back is "the Chateau".
But the crazy expenses of Michel Magne end up ruining the place.
At the beginning of 1974, the Chateau went in bankruptcy and close, and with it the crazy nights, his vices and its success.
I find myself dropped in Paris, without really understanding what happened to me during these three years.Pop music is still alive but without the Chateau, the French music seems tasteless and meaningless.I decide to become the first French Free-Lance Sound Engineer . Hard job because at that time, there is still little standardization in studios.A lot of home made consoles, bad cabling, diverses traps.But given the reputation gleaned in Herouville and hard work, the idea is accepted.I run from studios to studios,I learn dozens of different configurations, odd monitoring systems, I started screaming for a real maintenance, test tapes,perfectly lined up tape recorders, in short I am hated by a whole sleeping corporation but the hits happens.
Funny atmosphere, to switch from the best of the international production to the casual french pop.It was so different, especially about the artistic skills and the desire to produce itchy me seriously.
I must humbly admit that at that time a single thing obsessed me: Being the world number one. A vast programme, and today I realize the little interest of this will, but the only positive of this desire is giving me the necessary courage to confront the various hardships that life has thrown across my path . My technical knowledge is very good, I have already built several studios who made hits, and I spend my nights listening to records, playback mixes I have done finding them awful, and to read StudioSound and Record Engineer/Producer magazines.
We are already in 1975, Disco invades the airplay but Californian productions too.I am in the process of refurbish "Aquarium", a studio which will mark his time with his technical and acoustic qualities . A permanent flow of production, twenty hours a day, and finally a world number 1 in the Billboard, "Pop Muzik," from the group "M" by Robin Scott.Bad luck, for reasons which are personal to him,Robin does not credit my name on the cover and nobody will ever know that I was co-producer and engineer of this world success ... An experience which proves that a good speech does not match a good contract.
1980, the Aquarium studio dives for obscure reasons, and I go back to the Free Lance way.
In 1981, with my friend and engineer Didier Lozahic, a genius of electronics named Claude Prevost (who works today for the french company 44.1) and a young beginner engineer , Hervé Le Guil, (who subsequently will start the excellent studio Gimmick) we are launching into another astonishing adventure .We hire an abandoned studio called Stars Music located rue des Martyrs in Paris 18 and it will become Continental Studios.
We install and decide to take the step which leads us to be a one of the first leading digital studios on the planet, using the mythical 3M 32 tracks digital recorder.In few months the studio is full booked and produces a considerable number of hits : Jeanne Mas, Herve Cristiani, Chagrin d'amour, Alain Souchon, Etienne Daho,even Robert Palmer.Audio will be digital, with the emergence of timid but convincing Compact Disc.We discover the skills of these all new techniques, 18 hours a day, but the charms of digital recording do not wipe off the harsh reality of management and Continental adventure ends in the summer of 1984.
Back to square one, with the added bonus of privacy in parts. Music will be the engine of survival, the ego has suffered a beneficial sharp attack , and it is now a long period of mixes, exciting but difficult day after day.Mixing is the culmination of the career of the sound engineer, bringing together all the knowledge and synthesizing all the difficulties, being the last step in the studio work.I was not too bad bad, because 4 years later, the list of N°1 in the charts is very impressive.But I still dream of getting a N°1 as a producer.Honestly,having dismantled for all these years so many productions to repair them and make hits with give me more desire to build them from the beginning.I will have to wait until 1992 for getting my first multi platinum record as a producer with "Engelberg" from Stephan Eicher, in excess of one million and a half copies. Followed by many other successes, and a growing pleasure to finally reached a purpose looked for for 20 years.
Meanwhile the children grow and it is with joy that I discovered the elder becoming A&R manager. He will discover Mc Solaar with whom he will also make his first success as a composer / arranger. Hubert Blanc-Francard becomes "Boom Bass." Meanwhile, the youngest, tired of doing covers of George Michael, Stevie Wonder and many others finally gets to sing and sign his first contract with Virgin France. Mathieu Blanc-Francard becomes "Sinclair".
In 1996 we decide to associate ourselves to setup a studio together, and install inside the ton of eqiuipment that we have for years in our respective apartments, which I admit, will delight our neighboors.We move up in the former Studio 10, then named"Uncle Sam Studios". Mathieu will name it "Labomatic", perhaps because of the washing machine showing the cover of his first album ...
In 1998, arrival of Benedicte Schmitt. A woman sound engineer integrates the Labomatic Team. Her technical and artistic skills, her humour,will allow her to be rapidly integrated in this little commonplace structure.from now on, tube preamps, consoles and soldering irons will take another dimension.Our complementary skills will make athe difference much more quickly. It's very comfortable for a record producer to be able to rely with confidence on an engineer and having a focus on the arts.
The Labomatic Studio, which was at the beginning just a home studio allowing us to experiment and work on our projects , grew very fast. In 10 years, it went from a Yamaha 02R with 2 DA 88 to 2 control room/studios with ProTools HD 3 Accel 64 in/out and Euphonix System 5 mixing desk, which gave us the same feel when we view it the first time than the first SSL in 1980.Perfect ergonomics, a digital sound finally adult, and especially the pleasure to use it,something that I began to have lost with the ultra-standardization of all studios, Neve or SSL, on the whole planet ...
At the end of 2006, Studio 2 is also equipped with a second console Euphonix System 5 and the two studios are networked, sharing their resources ... This will enable us to further optimizing our unusual way of working.Benedicte could start a project in the studio 2 while I mix another one in Studio 1 or we could also work on the same project in 2 studios at the same time, thereby reducing the overall duration of the production.
Networking, already widely used in video, will become indispensable in the musical production as well.
Today, in 2008, I have the chance to remain intact, always have the same kids' dreams, gold records and always this passion for technology that pushes you to try anything even before the result is useful at the moment. I hope I have learned in 44 years that the future is already tomorrow morning, that we should not expect that things exist for doing them and that the last ones will stay the last ones.Internet, All Digital, Macs and PCs , DVD, Blue Ray and all the stuff are merely technologies.
A visit on the Vintage page of this site will show you that evolution has been long, and that these pioneers were rarely been respected in their time. Being too in advance is very expensive, but too late ruin.
The machine is only a means of expression. The acqired experience allows only avoid mistakes, and thus improve the result, to avoid doubts, clear ideas.
And without ideas, machines remain inert.
Dominique Blanc-Francard
See the DBF Tracklisting
See the DBF pictures album
I had the great privilege of having a sound engineer father.During my early childhood, instead of playing with an electric railway, I learned to do edits on a big Tolana monophonic tape recorder.
My brother Patrice was speaking into a black Melodium 55A microphone,(he was already rehearsing for his future job ...) After, we listened to our recordings playing the tape backwards and we thought that we had discovered the secret language of Martians.
It was 1955.Later I learned music, because I admit that the studies seemed boring.
Our best friend played slide trombone,he lived on the 2nd floor,we on the 5th, and we jammed through the open windows, which was charming our neighboors.Specially when they were listening to my first trumpet scales...On the evening, we were three on a old beatup scooter to go listen to unknown geniuses in the jazz clubs of St Germain des Prés.
In 1958,I had a dream:I wanted to become a movie director.I was fascinated by the movie cameras, then television cameras, with their large viewfinder in black and white and their 4 lenses turret... I read all books.No technical term had any secret for me.
Close-up, wide angle,pan, edits, travelling, the American shot, I was "incollable".The only problem was the need to enter the IDHEC,the French Cinema Institute and saw that my attendance at school, I quickly understood that I would never have the chance to be graduated .. Towards 1959, I learned the tenor banjo, very New Orleans style, and then the guitar, very Django style , and one day of 1960 I heard a radio for the first single by a rock band called "Les Chaussettes noires." They, or rather Eddy Mitchell, sang "You talk too much".
It was a flash. I shall be a rock guitarist . Despair in the family, my brother treats me of renegade because I do not listen any more to Charlie Parker nor Thelonious Monk. But this music is of my generation (I am 16 years old) and the lyrics are in French. After several meetings, I meet myself in a rock/twist band set up by the record company Decca, named " Les Pingouins " and I discover with bewilderment recording studios.
A technician in a white blouse and smoking a pipe asks me gently, but firmly to drop the level of my Vox AC30 because it distorts ,and promised me to use an horrible natural reverb instead of my Dynacord Echo tape machine because of the noise. ... This is the beginning of the war.
I am aware of the gap between the "technical side" and the "music side" the one which makes you ashame when you listen your record for the first time at home .I think this is the day that I decided that I should understand how it work, just to be able to get the rehearsals sound.
In 1962, rock bizness goes wrong, all the groups dissolve and solo singers emerge.The gigs are scarce and my father tells me he met someone who is looking for a sound engineer for a small studio he has just opened in Paris.And therefore advises me to move quickly to try to have the job.Explaining to me that the equipment is the same as the one with which I sought the secret language of the Mars for weeks, and therefore, I could very well be one.
This was my first job.I shall never know how to thank my father to have push me that day because I stayed 7 years in this studio where I learned my basics . I saw technology explode, moving from mono to stereo, from 2 to 3 and 4 to 8 tracks . I've been obliged to resume electronics classes because I had each year to build from my hands and with a simple drill and a soldering iron, the recording desk of the following season... I recorded everything that can be done on earth as different music, from jazz to salsa through realistic songs, operetta, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese folk, I also recorded soundtracks for theaters, skating rinks, strip-tease dancers, Esperanto classes in which there were 200 to 300 edits, and after a few years, I finally register when even my first commercial album, which became a collector, "Gong"from Daevid Allen.
We are in 1969.We start to feel strange smells of plants, the length of songs lengthens accordingly and the Pop music is born.
Through a good friend and excellent jazz producer,Pierre Lattes,I met Michel Magne at the Chateau d'Herouville,delirious place near Pontoise in which he has just built a 8 tracks recording studio . He asked me to come and work for him.After few weeks hesitating, I left my previous job and I go.During the three years spent in this exhausting and exciting adventure, I had the chance to meet, admire and record international artists such as Pink Floyd, Elton John, David Bowie, Cat Stevens, T. Rex, brilliant producers as Paul Samwell-Smith, Gus Dudgeon and Tony Visconti, who finally showed to me what a true sound rock'n'roll is.
I made my first and only solo album, at Barclay records, "Ailleurs" in which I played almost all instruments.
A real story, Hérouville, the first French studio that managed to make known throughout the world. Even today, when one speaks of French recording studios to the British or the Americans, the only name that comes back is "the Chateau".
But the crazy expenses of Michel Magne end up ruining the place.
At the beginning of 1974, the Chateau went in bankruptcy and close, and with it the crazy nights, his vices and its success.
I find myself dropped in Paris, without really understanding what happened to me during these three years.Pop music is still alive but without the Chateau, the French music seems tasteless and meaningless.I decide to become the first French Free-Lance Sound Engineer . Hard job because at that time, there is still little standardization in studios.A lot of home made consoles, bad cabling, diverses traps.But given the reputation gleaned in Herouville and hard work, the idea is accepted.I run from studios to studios,I learn dozens of different configurations, odd monitoring systems, I started screaming for a real maintenance, test tapes,perfectly lined up tape recorders, in short I am hated by a whole sleeping corporation but the hits happens.
Funny atmosphere, to switch from the best of the international production to the casual french pop.It was so different, especially about the artistic skills and the desire to produce itchy me seriously.
I must humbly admit that at that time a single thing obsessed me: Being the world number one. A vast programme, and today I realize the little interest of this will, but the only positive of this desire is giving me the necessary courage to confront the various hardships that life has thrown across my path . My technical knowledge is very good, I have already built several studios who made hits, and I spend my nights listening to records, playback mixes I have done finding them awful, and to read StudioSound and Record Engineer/Producer magazines.
We are already in 1975, Disco invades the airplay but Californian productions too.I am in the process of refurbish "Aquarium", a studio which will mark his time with his technical and acoustic qualities . A permanent flow of production, twenty hours a day, and finally a world number 1 in the Billboard, "Pop Muzik," from the group "M" by Robin Scott.Bad luck, for reasons which are personal to him,Robin does not credit my name on the cover and nobody will ever know that I was co-producer and engineer of this world success ... An experience which proves that a good speech does not match a good contract.
1980, the Aquarium studio dives for obscure reasons, and I go back to the Free Lance way.
In 1981, with my friend and engineer Didier Lozahic, a genius of electronics named Claude Prevost (who works today for the french company 44.1) and a young beginner engineer , Hervé Le Guil, (who subsequently will start the excellent studio Gimmick) we are launching into another astonishing adventure .We hire an abandoned studio called Stars Music located rue des Martyrs in Paris 18 and it will become Continental Studios.
We install and decide to take the step which leads us to be a one of the first leading digital studios on the planet, using the mythical 3M 32 tracks digital recorder.In few months the studio is full booked and produces a considerable number of hits : Jeanne Mas, Herve Cristiani, Chagrin d'amour, Alain Souchon, Etienne Daho,even Robert Palmer.Audio will be digital, with the emergence of timid but convincing Compact Disc.We discover the skills of these all new techniques, 18 hours a day, but the charms of digital recording do not wipe off the harsh reality of management and Continental adventure ends in the summer of 1984.
Back to square one, with the added bonus of privacy in parts. Music will be the engine of survival, the ego has suffered a beneficial sharp attack , and it is now a long period of mixes, exciting but difficult day after day.Mixing is the culmination of the career of the sound engineer, bringing together all the knowledge and synthesizing all the difficulties, being the last step in the studio work.I was not too bad bad, because 4 years later, the list of N°1 in the charts is very impressive.But I still dream of getting a N°1 as a producer.Honestly,having dismantled for all these years so many productions to repair them and make hits with give me more desire to build them from the beginning.I will have to wait until 1992 for getting my first multi platinum record as a producer with "Engelberg" from Stephan Eicher, in excess of one million and a half copies. Followed by many other successes, and a growing pleasure to finally reached a purpose looked for for 20 years.
Meanwhile the children grow and it is with joy that I discovered the elder becoming A&R manager. He will discover Mc Solaar with whom he will also make his first success as a composer / arranger. Hubert Blanc-Francard becomes "Boom Bass." Meanwhile, the youngest, tired of doing covers of George Michael, Stevie Wonder and many others finally gets to sing and sign his first contract with Virgin France. Mathieu Blanc-Francard becomes "Sinclair".
In 1996 we decide to associate ourselves to setup a studio together, and install inside the ton of eqiuipment that we have for years in our respective apartments, which I admit, will delight our neighboors.We move up in the former Studio 10, then named"Uncle Sam Studios". Mathieu will name it "Labomatic", perhaps because of the washing machine showing the cover of his first album ...
In 1998, arrival of Benedicte Schmitt. A woman sound engineer integrates the Labomatic Team. Her technical and artistic skills, her humour,will allow her to be rapidly integrated in this little commonplace structure.from now on, tube preamps, consoles and soldering irons will take another dimension.Our complementary skills will make athe difference much more quickly. It's very comfortable for a record producer to be able to rely with confidence on an engineer and having a focus on the arts.
The Labomatic Studio, which was at the beginning just a home studio allowing us to experiment and work on our projects , grew very fast. In 10 years, it went from a Yamaha 02R with 2 DA 88 to 2 control room/studios with ProTools HD 3 Accel 64 in/out and Euphonix System 5 mixing desk, which gave us the same feel when we view it the first time than the first SSL in 1980.Perfect ergonomics, a digital sound finally adult, and especially the pleasure to use it,something that I began to have lost with the ultra-standardization of all studios, Neve or SSL, on the whole planet ...
At the end of 2006, Studio 2 is also equipped with a second console Euphonix System 5 and the two studios are networked, sharing their resources ... This will enable us to further optimizing our unusual way of working.Benedicte could start a project in the studio 2 while I mix another one in Studio 1 or we could also work on the same project in 2 studios at the same time, thereby reducing the overall duration of the production.
Networking, already widely used in video, will become indispensable in the musical production as well.
Today, in 2008, I have the chance to remain intact, always have the same kids' dreams, gold records and always this passion for technology that pushes you to try anything even before the result is useful at the moment. I hope I have learned in 44 years that the future is already tomorrow morning, that we should not expect that things exist for doing them and that the last ones will stay the last ones.Internet, All Digital, Macs and PCs , DVD, Blue Ray and all the stuff are merely technologies.
A visit on the Vintage page of this site will show you that evolution has been long, and that these pioneers were rarely been respected in their time. Being too in advance is very expensive, but too late ruin.
The machine is only a means of expression. The acqired experience allows only avoid mistakes, and thus improve the result, to avoid doubts, clear ideas.
And without ideas, machines remain inert.
Dominique Blanc-Francard
See the DBF Tracklisting
See the DBF pictures album