Where control meets curiosity – the story behind Parrot
You know that feeling when you’re a bit stuck. Not in a dramatic way, just that tiny itch in the back of your mind telling you something’s missing. A twist. A spark. A flavor you can’t quite put your finger on.
We wanted to come up with an effect that could help find that missing piece without messing things up or hijacking a creative journey. An effect that does not take you in a completely different direction or give too many ideas, but one that gently nudges you forward along the existing path and soundscape. That’s why we created Parrot – Audio Repeater.
Parrot rewards experimentation
When the song stalls creatively or sound-wise in the rehearsal room, you often just start playing around and experimenting together with your band members. Throw ideas around. Let someone take a wrong turn that magically becomes the right one. Those small “accidents” that either add a subtle spice … or a beat that end up defining the entire track.
But when you’re in a software environment and get creatively stuck, that kind of spontaneous experimentation can sometimes be hard to find or you just get lost among all the different options. This is where Parrot is designed to play a role, to for example help explore rhythmic ideas with you, part effect tool, part co-pilot, part chaos engine. “Happy accidents” isn’t quite the right term … we prefer to say that Parrot gives you creative accidents. Because with Parrot, you decide exactly how controlled or unhinged things should get. You can dial in precision, or let it go full mayhem. Feed it a clean signal or a messy one. Keep it subtle or push it off a cliff. It all depends on what sound you send in and how active you want Parrot to be.
From subtle beat variations or harmonic accents to glitchy mayhem, Parrot adds something unique and interesting to almost anything. Whatever you feed it, it won’t let you down.
So how does it actually work?
Parrot creates rhythmic patterns by sampling small slices of incoming audio and looping them in a sequenced pattern. With detailed control over loop length, note values, variation, pitch, dynamics, filtering and more, you can shape the loop into exactly the groove or texture you’re after, while still keeping the character of your original sound.
Sometimes you want full control over your process; other times you just want to throw some sounds and grooves around and see what comes back. Maybe add some extra beats, a mega delay effect, maybe break everything completely, just to explore what could happen.
Parrot can design irregular grooves and broken loops you’d never program by hand, especially when those tiny shifts in timing or pitch start pushing things into new territories.
It syncs tightly to your DAW, or it can run wild and free – perfect for off-grid experiments.
Even the smallest tweak can generate a whole new pattern. It’s basically a rhythmic kaleidoscope.
A superior tool for transitions and breaks, rhythmic alterations of beats, stutter-like effects, making pads more detailed and much more. It's a small rhythm-lab in itself really.
(Mikael Sundin, lead dev and concept designer)
Expect the unexpected
Parrot is for those moments when you want an effect that can spark your next dance-floor idea, or slip that little je ne sais quoi into your mix that you didn’t even realize was missing.
For when you want something playful.
Something curious.
Something that listens to what you’re doing … and then throws back either exactly what you expect, or something totally unpredictable, always within your vibe, but in a way that would be painfully tricky (or just plain impossible) to pull off by hand.
