Alison Tavel has launched a Kickstarter to fund production for Resynator – a documentary film about rediscovering a lost synthesizer, designed by her late father in the 70’s – and getting to know him through the process.
Here’s what she has to say about it:
The Resynator had been in my grandmother’s attic since the passing of my father in 1988 when he died in a car crash only 10 weeks after I was born.
I took it back to LA with me to work with the man who had originally engineered it for my dad in the ‘70s. It took a while to get it up and running again because we had no other units to go off of, I had the only one left. My goal was to figure out what it actually was and honestly, if it was cool or not. I was only filming to document the resurrection of the synth, I had no idea that over the course of that year my entire life would change because of it.
This project didn’t start out as a documentary. I was not a documentarian. It started out as a resurrection project. I was simply filming to document the process of rebuilding the Resynator.
What I found, though, was that it was about so much more than just the Resynator. I found out that it was connecting me with my father, after 25 years of resistance. ave never happened had I not opened up that box in my grandmother’s attic.
Details are available at the project site.
For those wondering, and since the site and the teaser don’t describe this, this instrument is monophonic and consists of zero-crossing based pitch follower driving a VCO and an envelope follower that can control a waveshaper and a VCF. There’s also pedal inputs for controlling various settings. So it’s a mono synth whose main control signal is a mono audio signal whose pitch and amplitude are tracked.
A six voice version was under development that had a guitar controller input, but apparently didn’t make it to production.
hey!! thanks for helping explain it!! I created a “history of the resynator” video that’s on the kickstarter page to help people understand a few of the functions of it and the history behind it, but definitely didn’t get this technical as I didn’t want non-music people to be totally overwhelmed. Also, I’m still learning about it as well since I didn’t previously have a background in synths or gear of any kind. One day I’d like to make an actual tutorial video that showcases all of the functions.
This is both touching and fascinating. I look forward to watching the full documentary.
Hey thank you!
This is beautiful!!!
Thank you:)
Shame the kickstarter is only about making a documentation and not about getting the Resynator out to the users..
Well one day that will be the goal, but for now, I gotta get the story out there so people know about the synth! But yes, I’d love to find the right way to re-release the Resynator.
This is basically the same as a „guitar synth rack“ similar to Roland GR-500, which was also released in 1977….?
Hey thanks Synthtopia for publishing this story! I am really happy to have support from the synth community and will need help from this synth community to make sure my synth facts in the documentary are accurate, as I’m learning about all of this for the first time now. Really appreciate the support. My plan is to get this doc out so people can learn about the synth and my dad and what he was trying to achieve back in the late ’70s, and then one day find a way to release a new Resynator on the market.