Alison Tavel, whose father died in a car accident when she was an infant, grew up with family stories that her father was a charming genius and the creator of an early music synthesizer he called the Resynator.
The truth was more complex. Discovering this truth led Tavel on a decade-long journey to create the documentary Resinatorwhich premieres Sunday (March 10) at the SXSW Film & Television Festival.
“That's not the story I was trying to tell,” Tavel says Advertising sign, explaining how she planned to share a little-known piece of music technology history involving her father Don Tavel. Instead, it also created a family history with a deeper impact. Resinator is a film that explores the connections between mental health and creativity, set against the backdrop of musical invention.
“This is a search for your dad,” Peter Gabriel — a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer-songwriter and one of Resynator's few early adopters — tells the filmmaker, who visits Gabriel's offices in London — 37 years after her. father made the same journey.
Alison Tavel describes in the film how, after the death of her father, she grew up in a loving home, “a magical world”, with her mother, who remarried, and her stepfather. She narrates the documentary, often addressing her late father directly. “Dear Don, you have been missed so much over the years,” she says. “I've always loved music. And everyone told me – I got it from you.
Growing up with these family stories about how Don Tavel “invented the synthesizer” in the 1970s, she wanted to write a school report in fourth grade about her father's achievement. Open an encyclopedia to the entry for “synthesizer” — and read instead Robert Moog's well-known hit. “I didn't do my synthesizer report,” he says. It would be years before she thought of her father again.
Tavel worked for a music publisher, then as an assistant and later as a road manager for Grace Potter. And at 25, in her grandmother's attic, she discovered her father's invention packed in a cardboard box.
“I was looking for a keyboard, because that's what I thought was a synthesizer,” he says in the film. “And then I pulled out this black, rectangular box with a bunch of knobs on it. From what I remember [being told], is a “monophonic, monophonic, instrument-controlled, pitch-tracking synthesizer”. But I don't know what any of that means,” he says with a laugh.
More simply, “it's like a cool mix between a synth—which is, by definition, a synthetically derived sound—but triggered by an organic instrument,” says Potter's engineer and husband Eric Valentine. “So it's this really interesting combination.”
In the film, Potter offers Tavel some straightforward advice: “I just think you should get as many people as possible to play with this thing and see what comes of it,” he says. “See what sparks,” says Potter.
Among the artists and performers interacting with or commenting on Resynator are: musician and actor Fred Armisen, Onnie McIntyre of Average White Band, producer Butch Vig, Wally De Backer of Goyte, Rayna Russom of LCD Sound System, drummer Kenny Aronoff. Will Gregory of Goldfrapp, Adrian Utley of Portishead, Mike Gordon of Phish, Rami Jaffee of Foo Fighters and Jon Andersen of Yes.
“Your dad was creating something that was the beginning of many things,” says Andersen.
In one of the film's most moving segments, Tavel brings Resynator to Colombia to the studio of Latin Grammy-nominated producer and musician Christian Castagno. Playing guitar through the device, he declares, “It definitely has that old, textured sound,” gesturing with his fist. “It's a super-trippy machine. The synthesizers I have come across could almost be considered domesticated animals. And here, this thing looks like a wolf or something.”
The film takes a sad turn when Alison Tavel seeks out one of her father's friends: Gordon Baird, his co-founder Musician magazine (which was jointly owned with Advertising sign during the 1980s). She discovers that her father was visiting Bird in the days before the car accident that claimed Don's life. And she learns for the first time of her father's depression and emotional turmoil.
“I was so shocked,” the director recalls. “I called my mum and she revealed that there was this letter: 'Please read, come home and read this letter.' Her father had described the family roots of his emotional struggles and the difficulty in recognizing that pain.
In a director's statement about the film, Alison Tavel says of her father:
“He was not this perfect, famous and accredited master of music. he was a small, rambunctious man striving for success to feel loved and accepted. He was broken, confused and insecure. He was probably a genius – that part seems real, but he still couldn't figure out how to be loved. It led him to depression, abuse and a bad marriage – and may have led to suicide.”
Alison also gained perspective and advice from Gabriel. Just as her father always looked to the future, the rock legend said, Alison should do the same — turning Resynator's hardware into software for musicians. “I want to see my father's work fully realized – something he didn't get to see for himself,” he says.
“I made this film for me, for my friends and family—and for my father,” says Tavel. “But I have to share it publicly because I think there are universal themes here. It's about family, about understanding who you are—and who the people you love are—through your own lens.”
