Alison Tavel began her documentary Resynator, which is named after a synthesizer invented in 1979 by her late father, Don Tavel, just to chronicle its restoration.
“I realized as I was filming that this is not the story about the resurrection of a synthesizer,” Alison says. “This is the story about me connecting with my dad.”
A native of Loveland, Ohio, the now Los Angeles-based filmmaker’s father died in a car crash 10 weeks after Alison was born in 1988. Without her father alive to confirm or deny the stories she heard about him growing up, she was left with confusing contradictions.
“A tall tale I heard was that my dad invented the synthesizer, but as I grew up, I realized that’s not true,” she says. “He did invent a synthesizer, but he’s not the inventor of the synth.”
That title is credited to Robert Moog. But the intrigue of her father’s mysterious invention eventually drove her to investigate.
In 2014, Alison, the longtime personal assistant and tour manager for musician Grace Potter, took a break from work to root through her grandmother’s attic in Indianapolis.
“When I was first looking for the Resynator, I was looking for a keyboard because I thought synths were keyboards. I didn’t know what to do with it,” Alison says. “I ended up in the attic with one full unit and enough spare parts to build almost four. I have schematics for everything, a handful of notes and a letter talking about mass production.”
From there, she joined forces with Mike Beigel, the engineer who built the Resynator with her dad. Together, they restored the original synth — which is thought to be the world’s first digital instrument-controlled synthesizer. Don invented the Resynator in 1979, with prototypes dating back to 1974.
Though the device never hit major markets, the monophonic synthesizer had pitch tracking capabilities well ahead of its time, which led to private sales to high-profile musicians like Peter Gabriel and Yes frontman Jon Anderson.
After she had an original unit running, Alison documented her various efforts to learn more about her father’s machine. In the process, she found some big names in the music and entertainment industry to demo her dad’s invention, including the aforementioned Gabriel, Gotye, Gavin Russom of LCD Soundsystem and comedian/musician Fred Armisen.
But Resynator is not a film about synths — it’s the story of a father-daughter relationship (and lack thereof).
“I found that a lot of the issues that were coming up — the way I was handling them — I thought maybe people can relate to this story because families are (messed) up and so is mine,” Alison says. “Mine’s no different and that’s OK.”
Though the documentary is still in production, she has a goal to have it in film festivals by 2021. Recently, she began a funding campaign through Kickstarter. (At publication, the campaign had raised $41,830 — surpassing its $30,000 goal.)
“For the past four years I have raised donations privately, but I’ve put in about $120k myself,” she says. “Every inch of my savings and life on tour with Grace has gone toward this project. I just came to a point where in the last film shoot I had where I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ Everybody tells me to use other people’s money, but this project wouldn’t have happened if I was waiting around for other people’s money.”
So Alison brought the project as far as possible using her own funds.
“I've thought about doing others like GoFundMe or IndieGoGo, but none of those have timeframes," she says. ”Kickstarter, as far as I know, is the only platform that’s an all-or-nothing campaign. If I don’t raise X amount of dollars, I don’t get it. It’s the riskiest, but hopefully that means it’ll yield the best reward.”
Filmmaking is a precarious venture, but this documentary represents far more to Alison than a financial interest. She describes a feeling of responsibility in continuing her father’s work.
“There were many reasons he didn’t finish the Resynator, which I get into in the documentary. I haven’t figured out exactly why he halted production, but have a pretty good idea,” she says. “I’m not an inventor, musician and computer genius like my dad, but I have the same drive and motivation.
“Maybe Don’s up there playing puppets and leading me down a path that he wanted to go.”
For more info visit resynator.com. To support Resynator, consider contributing to its Kickstarter campaign.
*This story has been updated to reflect the print version of the piece
