MINILOGUE / SPEAKING SINE LANGUAGECONVERSIONS BY PARROTT
Bespoke instrument conversions. The Minilogue, speaking Sine Language.
ORIGINAL MINILOGUE CONVERSION / BY PARROTTTHE STORY UNFOLDS BELOW ↓
01 / BEFORE FLIGHTWORKS
I wasn’t trying to start a synth company.
I just wanted to find that feeling again.
PARROTT + MICROKORG / 2017–2019
About ten years ago, Lauren bought me a microKORG for Christmas. I absolutely fell in love with it. All those beeps and boops changed the way I approached making music.
A while later, after I opened for one of my musical idols, he suggested I look into a Minilogue. My microKORG sounded too digital.
That was honestly kind of devastating. I thought I was making the coolest sounds in the world.
02 / THE SEARCH FOR ANALOG WARMTH
A beautiful synth. Five years switched off.
I traded my Ensoniq TS-10 on Facebook Marketplace for a Minilogue, determined to find this mysterious analog warmth everybody talked about.
It was a beautiful instrument. But I wasn’t blown away. It never gave me quite the same feeling of exploration that the microKORG had. I played it less and less. Eventually, it ended up in a closet.
THE MINILOGUE YEARS / 2017–2019MINILOGUE LIVE / 2017–2019 · PHOTO: ZITA MOLNAR
03 / A DIFFERENT WAY INTO SOUND
I kept coming back to the harmonic series.
Meanwhile, I was getting frustrated with my own sound-design workflow. Serum, Vital, Pigments: incredible synthesizers. They just weren’t clicking for me.
I kept coming back to the harmonic series. The idea that complicated, expressive sounds could emerge from simple relationships between sine waves.
I started building my own instrument in Max for Live. I called it Sine Language.
SINE LANGUAGE / MAX FOR LIVE
It started in Max for Live.
This is the instrument I’d been building before I tried it on the Minilogue.
THE EXPANDED EDITOR / SINE LANGUAGE BETA 300
THE SAME INSTRUMENT / AT HOME IN ABLETON LIVE
TRY THE HARMONIC EDITOR.
Two VCO banks. Eight components. One sound. Shape the harmonics, then move them together.
SINE LANGUAGE / MINILOGUE
Two VCO banks. Eight oscillators.
D1 / 36.71 Hz
HARMONIC EDITOR4 PAIRED VOICE PATHS
THE COMBINED SOUNDMOTION / STILL
VCO 1 / BANK APAIR 1 · 2 · 3 · 4
VCO 2 / BANK BPAIR 1 · 2 · 3 · 4
MINILOGUE BANK
Bloom · harmonic layout and Motion timing from the Minilogue bank.
Sound Character
SHARED BY BOTH BANKS
OCTAVE
PLAY THE INSTRUMENT / MONOKEYS A–K · BLACK NOTES W E T Y U
TWO VCO BANKS→SHARED MOTION→LOW-PASS→DRIVE→ONE SOUND
Choose each component’s harmonic and level. A and B pair vertically. Motion uses one shared clock; the switches choose which components follow it. Drive saturates the mix.
Browser studies of the Sine Language Minilogue presets. Harmonic levels and Motion timing come from the actual bank; analog tone, effects, and motion curves differ.
04 / THE MINILOGUE EXPERIMENT
What if I put Sine Language in here?
I pulled the Minilogue out of the closet to see if I could turn it into a physical version of Sine Language. That meant rewriting the synthesis, the interface, and the presets.
2019 / FROM THE CAMERA ROLL
A LITTLE FORESHADOWING.
A Minilogue. A hammer. A tangle of cords. An empty cup of tea.
Apparently, the signs were there.
WHAT CHANGED
01 / OSCILLATORS
Harmonic components.
Eight analog oscillators, assigned to parts of one sound.
02 / INTERFACE
Custom firmware.
My synthesis behavior, menus, and boot screens.
03 / PRESETS
My preset library.
Sounds from Sine Language, adapted for the Minilogue.
BACK TO THAT FIRST FEELING
“For the first time in years, I couldn’t stop playing it.”
The results caught me completely off guard. Rich, organic, almost vocal. Little textures and granularities that made it feel alive. You turn a knob and it does what you expect, but somehow it still surprises you.
I shared what I’d been making. The clip took off, and people wanted to know if their Minilogue could become Sine Language too.
Howdy ho. Apparently, we started a conversion company.
That’s Flightworks. I’ve been refining the firmware, fixing bugs, and tuning the oscillators ever since.
I didn’t commission Korg to build me a synth. But in a weird way, I finally made the instrument I would have asked them to build.
Parrott
THE MINILOGUE, RUNNING SINE LANGUAGE
MINILOGUE PANEL / STUDIO VISUALIZATIONKEYBED AND CHASSIS / STUDIO VISUALIZATION
SINE LANGUAGE / FROM THE STUDIO
Here’s what it sounds like.
A recording from my studio.
PREVIEW FOOTAGE / NEW RECORDINGS TO COME
05 / CONVERSIONS BY COMMISSION
Minilogue conversions. By commission.
$599individual conversion You supply an original Minilogue.
I’m accepting a limited number of commissions. Each Minilogue is individually assessed, calibrated and configured. Sine Language, in the Minilogue’s own accent.
01 / ASSESSMENT
Instrument assessment.
Each commission begins with a conversation about your Minilogue’s condition, your setup and how you play.
02 / CONFIGURATION
Custom configuration.
Performance options and control behavior are planned around your workflow as part of the commission.
03 / CALIBRATION
Tuning and verification.
Oscillator readings guide individual tuning. The completed instrument is checked for tuning, preset recall and control response.
CONVERSIONS
Join the conversion list.
Register your interest in a Sine Language commission. I’ll follow up about your instrument and availability.
PARROTT + MICROKORG / 2017–2019