Resynator

Hi, my name is Ali Tavel,

and I'm the one who's gonna record this.

- Well, hi, Ali. - Hi.

How are you doing?

Dear Don, this is me.

- Hi. - Hi.

You've missed a lot over the years.

There she is.

She's a-dancing on that table.

I was always such a curious kid.

I'm Ali Tavel, reporting.

Mom built this magical world for Lexi and I

to be loud and weird and messy and creative.

Ah! There they are.

She encouraged me to be me.

- Know what that is? - Oh, my God!

Your own recording studio.

-Oh, my God. -Ali, you can sing along

and record your songs.

-You can play back your voice. -Oh, my God.

I've always loved music.

Everything about it.

And everyone told me I got that from you.

When I was in the fourth grade,

I decided to do a report about the synthesizer,

because our family told me you were this genius musician

who played with Stevie Wonder and B. B. King

and was friends with Steve Wozniak

and invented the synthesizer.

So I went to the library at my school

and checked out the "S" encyclopedia,

expecting to see, "Synthesizer: invented by Don Tavel."

But your name wasn't in it.

It made me question

if any of the stories about you were true.

And these stories were all I had to connect to you,

because you died in a car crash when I was ten weeks old.

So I never knew you.

I didn't end up doing my report on the synthesizer,

and it would be years before I ever thought about you again.

Okay, real fast, I'm gonna take your tambourine

- and your drink to stage... - Okay.

...and-and your, and your cape.

All right, let's go to stage.

I'm 25 now and I tour for a living.

I work for Grace Potter.

She's my boss, but she's also my best friend.

I got to grab her.

-We got, we got minutes. -Okay, I got to go get ready.

-All right, okay, here we go. -Let's go this way.

I'm gonna put my fringe vest on.

I'm not a musician,

but I'm surrounded by them because of this job.

Hey, Jackson, you've got five minutes to stage.

Jackson, thank you so much.

Have a great set, Jackson.

Everybody's got ears and packs, right?

- Yes. - Okay.

All right, guys.

One, two, three!

And being on the road,

around all of these creative people,

with their gear and instruments,

it made me curious again,

after all these years...

...about the synthesizer you invented.

I'd known my whole life that it was stashed away

in a box somewhere in the attic.

An abandoned mystery for 25 years.

But maybe it was finally time for me to go find it.

Hmm.

Oh, no way.

B. B. King guitar pick.

My family always said that my dad had,

uh, played with him before, so...

Let's see what we got here.

That's cool.

Okay.

So this is...

No.

I bet this is it.

This is it.

The Resynator.

The synthesizer takes advantage

of computer technology.

Simply by playing a note on my musical instrument--

in this case, the guitar-- and the computer will then

set the FX oscillator up to that interval.

The oscillators will be responding

to my guitar input

via a Digital Frequency Analyzer.

The final computer aspect is the Timbral Image Modulator,

and I'll be using a variety of shapes.

Knock, knock.

- Hey. How are you? - Hi.

-Alison. -Good to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

So, everyone says you're the person to talk to

about synths, so, I, uh,

I have a rare one, and when I got it

out of my grandma's attic, I was looking for a keyboard.

-Mm. -'Cause I thought that that's what a synthesizer was.

And then I pulled out this, like, black rectangular box

with a bunch of knobs on it.

From what I can remember, it's a "rack-mount,

"monophonic, instrument-controlled,

s-- p-pitch-tracking synthesizer."

But I don't know what any of that stuff means.

Basically,

a pure synthesizer, in theory, can do any sound,

any direction of sound, any kind of combinations.

But that's a pure theoretical concept.

When synthesizers came out,

this was a whole vista of new sounds

that we haven't heard before.

The most commercial and usable system

was Bob Moog's system.

This became a cliché that people consider a synthesizer

as something with a keyboard attached.

The Resynator is a mystery because it's a black box

which is full of potential.

Your synthesizer is in there ready to make notes and sounds,

but is controlled by an instrument or a voice.

Don was in the first wave of people

using computers to try to track pitch.

But the heart of it is an analog synthesizer,

and that's the key part of it because a lot of instruments

are one or the other-- but not both.

No one ever made a successful instrument

that was controlled by outside sounds,

but it seems your dad had figured out a way

to make it work.

If you really had invented something

so revolutionary, then why did I have the only one?

Not knowing anything about the synth,

or your plans for it,

made me realize that I also didn't know anything about you.

On "Indy Alive,"

we promise you all types of things.

Now, you may be thinking that's an organ,

but that's really a guitar,

and you're listening to the music of Don Tavel.

How'd you get interested in this kind of music?

Well, I got into electronic music when it started, uh,

pretty much in the '60s, and, um,

I followed that involvement through into the '70s,

and we got into using computers, uh, early on in,

uh, in the early '70s, through the mid-'70s,

and then I ended up inventing and, uh, holding seven patents

on the precursor to MIDI.

You have seven patents?

-Yes. -That you've created yourself?

Yes, on a Musical Instrument Digital Interface

similar to MIDI, and I was a member

of the first conference on MIDI, uh,

to try and develop a standard.

The reason why I wanted to come here

is because the Resynator project

has led me to being open to finally,

finally wanting to know who Don was as a human.

When Don was graduating from the School of Music,

he had to give a performance.

Maestro.

He had taken guitar pickups,

to his head... Uh-huh.

...and with his thoughts,

he controlled the music and the lights.

The Resynator, though, right? It was that?

It was an early version of the Resynator.

I couldn't believe

what we were watching.

I mean, it was just wild.

The dean and the faculty members

all crowded around us, remember?

And they said,

"Congratulations.

You have a genius for a son."

Remember?

And I looked at his father, I said,

"Who wants a genius for a son?"

Did he ever voice a goal for you guys?

Like, did... I mean, the Resynator,

he had plans to produce it...

-Oh, absolutely. -...but then he didn't.

So, I just wonder what, um,

his reasoning for not moving forward

with the-the production anymore.

Um, I can't really address it...

-Yeah. -...other than to say that I think that,

uh, it was just an economic decision

to move on to the, to the next thing.

But absolutely, his plan was to be

in the music industry, in the electronics industry,

and pushing the envelope.

I once again found myself

hearing stories about you,

but not being able to relate to any of them.

You have to know-- I know why they love music and art:

because I did it to them.

I made it a rule.