"...just open it?" - Emily Hopkins
In July 2019, the very first upload to a channel belonging to Long Island electroacoustic harpist Emily Hopkins hit YouTube. The video centers around a review of MOOD, an ambient multi-effect from pedal company Chase Bliss. The review presents a casual, if somewhat improvisational, account by Hopkins running the effect through her instrument of choice, the harp. From the corner of her studio, surrounded by a grab bag of other random effect pedals, Hopkins found her way through the MOOD's deep interface, stumbling upon new tonal discoveries along the way, certainly chasing her bliss in the process.
Almost seven years later, and Hopkins is among the most celebrated figures in the effect pedal community. The harpist's work has since evolved from her humble MOOD review. Years of work traveling the world, bumping elbows with other similar "effect pedal celebrities" as it were, and composing for the likes of video game giant Ubisoft, London-based animation studio The Line, and film industry staple DreamWorks have brought Hopkins here today. Parting is such sweet sorrow, but Parting is also a celebration.
This is the Old Blood Noise Endeavors Parting Glitch Device.
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Emily Found There
Introducing the Old Blood Noise Endeavors Parting Glitch Device
There is a bit of a story to Parting, if you'll indulge us. This story involves electroacoustic harpist Emily Hopkins and Oklahoma's most wily effect-slingers, Old Blood Noise Endeavors. After a 2025 packed with plenty of exciting developments, Old Blood kicks off their 2026 with Parting, a multi-mode ambient and glitch effect pedal designed in close collaboration with Hopkins.
Hopkins has been a fan of Old Blood Noise Endeavors pedals for quite some time. Many of the harpist's most popular videos have covered or featured Old Blood pedals including their Bathing Liminal Delay and their Dark Star Stereo Reverb, the latter of which Hopkins named her Pedal of the Year for 2024 at her online "Emmas" effect pedal award show. All of this to say that Old Blood has been on a strong creative streak leading into 2026 and found an informed and inventive creative collaborator in Hopkins. The result of this collaboration is Parting, a multi-mode glitch effect that puts forward an exploratory experience with plenty of charming, surprising discoveries along the way and short trips to and from inspirational spots.
Parting is many things at once. At the risk of spoiling some surprises at the jump, Parting is an ambient soundscaper, an introspective modulator, a raucous noisemaker, and a journey beyond the proverbial looking-glass. However you slice it, with Parting, you're in for a knockout of a musical experience – a real whopper if you'd like... a whopper junior, if you're tepid... let's talk some specifics.
"Parting goes a lot further than putting my favorite effects together in one box. We spent a ton of time curating these sounds to create something really special when they all work together, using the knowledge that I've accumulated over the years from trying pretty much every effect pedal that comes out. This really is a physical and a sonic representation of this entire journey that I've been on." - Emily Hopkins
Parting 4 U
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Parting Glitch Device Controls
By Hopkins's own admission, there is a lot going on with Parting. At square one, it can seem daunting to approach Parting. This is not at all the intent. Parting isn't really about knowing exactly what's coming next. Parting isn't about having all the answers – and that's completely by design. Centrally, Parting is a multi-effect with a few different "brain hemispheres" working all at once and segmented by a few groupings of controls. Let's talk about these effects.
Cut to the ChaseWe feel, as does Old Blood Noise Endeavors and Hopkins herself, that Parting is not so much about the granular details. Parting can be explained succinctly as a massively powerful multi-effect that quickly creates captivating effect mixes inspired by Hopkins's favorite textures. These mixes are meant to be exploratory as you experiment and hit creatively inspiring sweet spots along the way. Leaving some aspects of the pedal not fully explained may be narratively unfulfilling. However, to explain every detail of the pedal and pursue an explanation of each parameter and what combination of parameters is meant to reach what end really isn't the point of Parting. What's more, Parting has quite a few moving parts and we may very well be here all day getting down to every last aspect of the pedal. We hope that you can trust in us and in Old Blood Noise Endeavors that you're in good hands with Parting.
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Parting Modulation Effect Section
Parting features, first, a powerful modulator that swaps between a tremolo and a vibrato. As you'll find, Parting is truly a pedal with many parts working together, so it's best to understand the modulator – and all other effects we'll cover – as ingredients in a larger effect soup. Since all of these effects can be mixed to taste and interact closely with one another, there's really no "starring" role with Parting. All of these elements add up together to something entirely new.
- Tremolo and Vibrato – The modulator on Parting is very effective and impactful. Whether on the rhythmic, sound-shaping tremolo or the twisty, wonky vibrato, these modulations are truly effects to be heard and felt. The tremolo and vibrato both create impactful effects on the shape of the overall output of Parting while its stronger Depth and Speed dials cut a fast tremolo with deep volume dips or wind up frantic pitch twists.
- LFO Waveforms –These two modulations are shaped through the pedal's onboard LFO with seven waveform shapes that present the more traditional squares and sines to the more unpredictable randomized waves. Randomness, as it happens, will play an important role soon. Parting's LFO plays a pivotal role as you create trembling sine-wave pitch vibratos, blinking "on-off" square wave tremolos, or something altogether more wild on a randomized sine wave basis.
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Parting Glitch Effect Section
The second "hemisphere" on Parting is its glitch effect section. Parting's glitch section groups effect textures of delay and reverb with randomized, chance-controllable glitch encounters. Perhaps the most straightforward way to describe the glitch section of Parting is as a delay that quickly runs off the rails to new sonic pastures altogether. Let's talk about what that means more specifically, but also more broadly.
- Delay and Reverb – Parting's glitch section presents massive soundscaping power to the equation. The central response of the glitch section is a delay, which, when adjusted with the Smear knob, receives loving helpings of diffusion and feedback to quickly get into reverb cloud territory. These delays very easily stack up onto each other as Parting puts more and more feedback response in front and behind them.
- Glitch and Reverse – It, of course, doesn't stop there, though. The glitch section of Parting is built up by its Chance and Glitch dials. These two controls heighten the variance of random signal inputs to enter the delay trail and create different clock subdivisions, respectively. What that all means is that Parting's glitching capabilities are deeply impactful and deeply effective as it chirps and barks at random intervals with set chance and speed parameters. Higher clock speeds? Higher pitch glitches. Lower? Lower. This side of Parting really delivers for players who love the strange but oh-so beautiful harmonies a glitch sampler pedal can create. For both those light, twinkling, whistling, harmonic peculiarities to those resonant, grumbling tears in the fabric of time, Parting does it all with finesse.
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Parting Reverse/Bit Crush Effect Section
There is one last section of Parting to go over. Locked to a blissfully simple single dial, we have Dissolve. Carrying two effects to choose between and feed Parting's effects to through to its output, Dissolve is a signal reverser past noon and a bit crusher before noon. Dissolve works on not only a two-way selection basis, but an incremental basis as well. Start at noon and go forward and Dissolve halves the reverse clock to create long and degrading reverse trails – start at noon and work backwards and Dissolve reduces sample rate for an increasingly bit crushed output. Either of these effects create pretty massive impacts on the overall sound of Parting.
Let's talk about some sounds, shall we?
"This pedal can do a lot of stuff. It can do simple, very practical things, some fun glitchy things, it can also create beautiful, ambient soundscapes that no other single pedal can do." - Emily Hopkins
Such Sweet Sorrow
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Parting Glitch Device Tones
As you may have guessed from all the preamble about each effect brain Parting is working with, Parting has a lot going on. What's more, all that "a lot" interacts with itself in pretty impactful ways. We said at the top of this discussion that Parting is many things, so let's run down a few of these "many things" to which we alluded.
Slice and DiceRolling back a couple of the more noisy elements to Parting, it becomes a very expressive tremolo. Part of what we'd like to certainly shout out is Parting's capacity as a pseudo-synthesizer pedal. When coupling the deep and fast chops of a more regimented tremolo, the blurriness of signal reversing, and the blinding sheen of the pedal's onboard filtering functions, you can easily land yourself with a tremolo reminiscent of a Boss Slicer. Pseudo-synth sounding for furious, shimmery, chopping waves of tremolo, Parting can work as the backing for your next darkwave track.
Yanking the Narrative ThreadPart of the fun of Parting is mixing effects together in ways that you might not usually hear. For one, the effectiveness of Parting's vibrato modulation can easily create tiny pitch swirls. When fed through the reverse and delay engines with a touch of randomness for flavor, Parting creates a web of hurried, randomized pitch vibratos that rush to keep up with the present. Working Parting's vibratos with its bit-crushing can quickly create busy pile-ups of sound in the delay trails, like a skirmish between a celestial animal crossing the watering hole and its herd rival.
Unstuck in TimeCertainly something worth exploring with Parting is its ability to summon truly inspired blinks and roars of harmonic glitches. When working through Dissolve's clock reverse capabilities and glitch randomization, when coupled with a more rampant delay and full "on/off" tremolo, Parting can introduce warped blinks in the time-space continuum. Something to make you question if you've lost your place in time, something to make you forget what started and what ended where with all the noisiness and discordance of an ambient drone track. A "the-goth-chicken-or-the-goth-egg" kind of situation.
Time Chamber Tape ReelReminiscent of other modern glitch devices, Parting certainly is capable of creating "lo-fi" tones. Makes enough sense with Hopkins being so fond of other lo-fi modulation pedals. Capable of getting into wow-and-fluttered tape reel delay tones, the Parting's ability to introduce subtle pitch bends in its delay trails and modest sample reduction means it has all the ingredients to emulate a tape reel echo delay with all the analog graininess and reel slip-and-slide fluctuations that go with it.
Part of Your World
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Parting Glitch Device Further Functions
As we start wrapping this party up, let's run down a few of the smaller functions that put Parting on the same level as other impressive Old Blood Noise Endeavors releases.
- Mix Blend – It would be no overstatement to say that Parting is a powerful effect. Since Parting can not only be the star of the show but a supporting role in soundscaping, a dedicated Mix dial rolls in the overall output of the effect in with your clean signal. You can set Parting how you like and keep it running in the background if you so choose, which is also a very lovely option for jamming and experimenting!
- Expression and MIDI – Like so many Old Bloods before it, Parting is fully equipped with a 1/4" expression connection and 1/8" MIDI control connections. These elements mean Parting is ready to be built out into bigger rigs with clock sync and digital control ready at the helm with expression control assignable over any combination of Parting's parameters. It really wouldn't be an Old Blood without 'em after all!
- Stereo Routing – Once again, like other recent Old Bloods, Parting is fully stereo-ready. Stereo-enabled in and out connections mean Parting can be routed in mono, stereo, or mono-to-stereo. These routes are available via stereo cables and onboard control scheme switching.
- Auxiliary Footswitching – Parting comes equipped with an additional footswitch. This switch can be used to set tempos via tap tempo, slow the whole effect to a half-speed clock, or roll through its onboard bank of three programmable presets and its live operation mode.
- Buffered or True Bypass – Closing this out, Parting can be swapped between true bypass and buffered bypass switching. This plays a pretty impactful role in Parting's playability in particular as it can either be swapped to true bypass – meaning when it's off, it's off – or kept on buffered where the effect keeps rolling after the pedal is switched off. Play around with Parting's self-sustaining, feed-itself-into-itself delay abilities and you're sure to find out quick about the fun Parting can have even after its switch is switched off.
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Parting Glitch Device Final Thoughts
So, here we are. Old Blood Noise Endeavors, Emily Hopkins, Parting. What have we learned?
For one, we can say that we learned about how much can truly be packed into one pedal. If anything, Parting is a clear example of how far and in how many directions you can go with a single pedal. Runaway delays, introspective modulations, randomized glitches, reversed wonderworlds, it's really all here. Maybe a companion to that first point, we learned about how much a keen creative lens can shape a sound. While Parting contains many of Emily Hopkins's favorite effects in one box, it should go without saying that the experience is far more than the sum of its parts. Parting is not only an assembly of glitches, delays, modulations, and a couple other things thrown in there for fun, Parting is a choose-your-own adventure where those effects act as narrative paths. Those narrative paths even go off on their own to new places you never would have imagined, and every time, you're along for the journey.
In the final minute of Emily Hopkins's first video, the harpist closed out the review with a joking take on every YouTuber's favorite part of the video: the Call to Action. Between giggles, Hopkins concluded her first review.
"If you want me to review any more pedals... like and subscribe! Comment below if you would like me to review any more pedals, any new pedals that I haven't done – any pedal that you want... I will review it... eventually..."
