Resynator Documentary Kickstarter Launches

Follow-up to this post. The Kickstarter campaign is now live here. Click through for full details including the different pledge levels.
Some info captured for the archives here on MATRIXSYNTH:


"Hi, my name is Alison, this is my story about finally connecting with my dad through a synthesizer from the late '70s. I know it’s weird, stay with me…

When I was 23, I began working for Grace Potter as a tour assistant. Grace is my hero and one of the most talented humans I’ve ever met. Over the years of touring and being around musicians constantly, it would come up in conversation that my dad invented a synth, but I didn't know anything else about it - I truly didn't even really understand what a synthesizer was. Eventually when we had a few weeks off tour in 2014, I flew to Indiana to get 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. I've been filming for four years now and with the help of many many solid friends who happen to be major talents in the film world, I've been able to document the ongoing adventure. I've self-funded this project, held fundraisers and been fortunate to find some supportive friends and family to help get the project here. I now know what I need to finish production on this documentary, filming and funding-wise, and I am looking to the Kickstarter community for support for this final push.

Looking back, there have been so many memorable moments that would have never happened had I not opened up that box in my grandmother's attic.

The synthesizer my father invented was an extension of himself. It was expressive, it was humanistic, it was unpredictable. And being that I'm the furthest thing from a musician that you can get - the synthesizer to me, was intimidating. I didn't know how to play it or understand it. Fortunately, working in music, I had some really awesome connections to people who could play it and help me to understand it. Every time I took the Resynator around to someone new I learned a little more about it. People like Eric Valentine, Grace Potter, Gotye, Brian Kehew, Will Gregory, Adrien Utley, Mike Gordon, Fred Armisen and more were so generous with their time to sit with me and demo it.

The most surreal moment by far was flying to the UK to interview Peter Gabriel. He agreed to meet with me to talk about the three Resynator units that his company bought back in 1980 from my dad. That will go down as one of the coolest and most nerve-wracking experiences of my life!"