Onward
Living landscapes.
Onward is a sampler controlled by your playing. It moves when you do, capturing the sounds you make to create rich musical landscapes.
You will find responsive accompaniment, synthetic reimaginings, and a whole heap of glitching dreamscapes.
It has two sides – one freeze for soft, smooth sounds, and one glitch for angular, repeating sounds. Combine them into one moving mega-effect, or split them apart for waves of depth and dimension.
Get to know Onward in 90 seconds as Joel, a collection of instruments, and some animated friends take you on a little journey through its possibilities.
- Create rich, layered landscapes with your playing.
- Freeze a moment infinitely, then mold it and bring it to life.
- Introduce a variety of organic and musical glitches.
- Swell, burst and sustain with the synth-inspired Shape section.
Dynamic double
Onward is with you. It moves when you do and uses your own playing to surround you with layered accompaniment. If you go wild, it will too – mellow down a bit and Onward will follow suit.
Simply plug in and start doing what you do.
Effects
Use Onward's clump of built-in effects to add texture, harmony, and motion to your samples. An overdriven sub-octave perhaps, or maybe a low-resolution chorus.
Shape
Onward includes a synth-inspired Shape section that controls the way it moves, for everything from slow swells to infinite plains to tight bursts of sound.
Error
Break up the routine with three different flavors of malfunction. Mess with timing, playback, and condition to make the glitches feel more natural and/or get the freeze in on the fun.
Together or not.
The key to Onward's depth is the way its two channels interact.
You can use them together as one mega-effect, including interactive elements like sidechaining and dynamic ducking.
OR
Choose from a variety of unique ways to split them apart to create more complex effects, like a small orchestra moving in and out of harmony.
Joel, Tom, and Zack explore the ins, the outs, and the ons of Onward.
Expand and integrate
Onward features advanced connectivity and customization options including MIDI, CV and Expression control, presets, and internal modulation of any or all its knobs.
Downloads
Specs
- Stereo I/O
- Presets (2 Internal, 122 via MIDI)
- Internal modulation (ramping)
- MIDI (PC, CC, Clock Sync)
- CV control
- Expression control
- Tap Tempo
- Trails
- Analog dry thru
- True / buffered bypass
- 9V DC Center Negative ~200 mA
Onward! Blog
Why we made an audio-controlled sampler
written by Joel Korte
Hello everyone.
This is my favorite thing to write. We have a new pedal!
It’s a standard, non-limited release. It’s kind of a sequel, but not really. I’ll explain why.
Before I get into anything else, I’m going to tell you the word of the day: Dynamic.
This is what separates Onward from anything else we’ve ever made. It’s an audio-controlled sampler that tracks your playing and uses it to create these really immersive musical landscapes that move when you do.
It’s available to preorder now and we’ll start shipping in about a month (mid-June).
Now if you want to hang around I’d love to tell you all about it.
Story time
When Tom Majeski joined Chase Bliss a couple years ago we knew we had to make a version of Generation Loss MKII, but beyond that it wasn’t clear if we would revisit any other CooperFX pedals.
Outward was always the other Cooper pedal that excited us the most, but it felt like there might be just a bit too much similarity with MOOD so that possibility just kinda sat there. Until a few months ago when Tom approached me with an idea.
The development for this one started really humble, we didn’t decide in advance if this was going to be a pedal or not. Tom just wanted to chase a curiosity and usually that’s a good idea.
And it worked out.
Onward is very much its own thing, I know Outward has its fans so I want to be really clear about that. It doesn’t try to do everything that Outward did. It’s a more focused, refined pedal that takes the envelope mode concepts from Outward and dives all the way to the bottom.
We did actually test out a version of this pedal that had a lot more in common with Outward, to see if we could make everyone happy. But it felt watered down.
So we committed to this new direction. Onward!
A bit more about it
There’s so much to talk about but I’ll stay away from the facts because you can find those here.
I personally think the most interesting thing about Onward is how well it tracks and reacts to your playing. It does some very synthy things, but unlike a synth pedal it doesn’t have to analyze your playing. It just samples it – it’s all you. So it’s really tight and responsive, and then you have a whole pile of ways to shape and mess with those samples and how they play back.
Another unique aspect of Onward is how the two sides form this unlikely friendship. The freeze is smooth and shapeless, the glitch is crisp and repetitive. One gives you atmosphere and synthetic soundscapes, the other gives you rhythm and structure. You can use them solo, both at once, or – my preference – lock in one side and play along to it, while the other continues to follow you.
When all of the parts come together it can feel like a synthetic orchestra supporting you and following your every move. That’s not a feeling I’ve had before.
The Field Guide is done as well if you want some more detailed info.
Details
We’re in the final couple weeks of beta testing now so it’s just about there. Features are all finalized, hardware is ordered and on the way. As soon as it gets here we’ll be ready to start building these things up.
Our target is to start shipping mid-June and have all orders filled by the end of July.
I feel like I get to bring a bit of extra energy to these announcements when it’s something Tom made, because I’m genuinely amazed by it. So that’s where I’m at with Onward right now. It’s wowing me and I hope it wows you.
Thanks for reading!!