Chase Bliss Onward

The Chase Bliss Onward is a dynamic sampler pedal: instead of analyzing your playing the way a synth pedal does, it samples the sound you actually play and uses those samples to build new parts around you. Chase Bliss's Joel Korte describes it as an audio-controlled sampler that tracks your playing dynamics and creates evolving musical landscapes from them¹.

The pedal is built around two sides, freeze and glitch. The freeze side produces smooth, atmospheric textures and synthetic soundscapes; the glitch side produces angular, repeating, rhythmic material. As Korte puts it¹²³:

Because it samples rather than analyzes, Korte says the Onward stays tight and responsive: "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"¹.

The two sides: freeze and glitch

Gearnews summarized the split plainly: "Freeze mode creates smooth, atmospheric textures, while the Glitch mode delivers more rhythmic and percussive effects"³. Pedal of the Day heard the same division, describing "one freeze for soft, smooth sounds, and one glitch for angular, repeating sounds," and finding in the pedal "responsive accompaniment, synthetic re-imaginings, and a whole heap of glitching dreamscapes"².

The two sides are engaged by their own footswitches, and they interact. Holding down either footswitch locks that side's signal in place while the other stays dynamic, responding to what you play. Pressing both together opens up secondary and hidden features and modes⁵.

Controls: Shape, Glitch and Error

The frozen and glitched material is shaped through a synth-inspired Shape section that, according to Delicious Audio, can deliver anything from slow swells to sustained drones to sound explosions⁶. The Glitch section offers control over timing, playback and condition, letting you make the glitches feel more natural or pull the freeze side into the glitching².

The Error knob is the wild card. It introduces random irregularities in timing, playback and other parameters to spur what Delicious Audio calls happy accidents⁶. Gearnews describes how it works under the hood: the error parameter twists the glitch memory in three ways, so the signal stumbles, is pitched, and is played backward³.

Guitar.com's reviewer singled out how these controls interact:

Stereo, MIDI and presets

The Onward is enabled for TRS stereo inputs and outputs, as on Chase Bliss's recent models⁵. Beyond that, it carries the connectivity players expect from the brand's larger pedals: MIDI, CV and expression control, presets, and internal modulation of any or all of its knobs²⁶. That last point means every control can be modulated internally, not just swept by an expression pedal. For players running MIDI pedal setups, the Onward can slot into preset switching and parameter automation like the rest of the Chase Bliss line.

Where it came from: Outward and Tom Majeski

The Onward is a development of the Cooper FX Outward, a pedal whose primary function Gearnews describes as a glitch looper with an envelope follower, with freeze, octave and distortion functions³. Guitar.com calls the Onward "the latest creative endeavour inspired by Tom Majeski's Cooper FX"⁴, and Guitar Pedal X frames it as a Tom Majeski pet project, an extrapolation from his former Outward pedal⁴¹.

Korte is careful about the relationship:

He describes the new pedal as "a more focused, refined pedal that takes the envelope mode concepts from Outward and dives all the way to the bottom"¹. In short: Outward fans keep their pedal, and Onward goes deeper on the envelope-sampling idea rather than wider.

Price and availability

The Onward opened for pre-order at $399 in the USA and €469 in the EU and UK in May 2024³⁵, with shipping expected from mid-June 2024 and early orders likely to arrive before the end of June¹⁵. Chase Bliss confirmed it as a standard, non-limited release rather than a small-batch run¹.

What reviewers said

Reception was positive, with a common caveat about learning the pedal. Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson called it "a highly musical pedal, while it does have a learning curve in adapting to how best to deploy it," and named it a superb companion pedal to the Chase Bliss MOOD, describing it as an ingenious dynamic envelope sampler-modulator-repeater⁷. Guitar.com's buyers guide named it the best pad generator pedal in its ambient pedals category in January 2025⁸.

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