With high speed internet access prices falling, and the strength of independent music distribution on a (slow but steady) rise, it should be no surprise to discover that it’s really easy and affordable to broadcast yourself LIVE over the web.

In one simple webpage, Krispen Hartung explains how to use SHOUTcast hosting to setup a live webcast feed that anyone can listen to. You can easily set this up and be broadcasting from your bedroom, home studio, or rehearsal space for the price of a 12-pack each month. Find a live venue with high speed internet, bring your laptop, and you can even simulcast a live performance!

We’re not quite to a time when a band can build a large, career-sustaining fanbase through the web alone. But that day is coming. Even now, why wouldn’t a band or solo musician be able to build a small, dedicated fanbase through webcasted performances and releases? I love the excitement and fun of a live show as much as anyone else - but if I have to choose between no show at all, and a webcast of a good band - I choose webcast.

Thanks to Kris Hartung for putting this information together!

So, as part of my re-commitment to this whole blog thang, I’ve finally gone back and extracted the results of the 2005 Looper Survey that I setup online last year. Interestingly, respondents have submitted data even as late as 2 weeks ago, so maybe we can consider my complete neglect of this survey as an attempt to capture as much data as possible…

As opposed to trying to run every statistic possible on this data, I’ll only provide a summary of a few things I find interesting. Those of you with inquiring and scientific minds may want to download this spreadsheet, which contains all of the raw data, and a PivotTable that makes exploring the data easy (once you know how to use a PivotTable, that is!).

Demographics:

182 people responded to the survey, representing 24 countries. Only 5 of the respondents were female (c’mon ladies!). The average respondent had almost 7 years of looping experience, and all totalled the respondents represented 1,199 cumulative years of experience! Imagine tapping into all of that knowledge…

Here’s a chart of the distribution of respondents by country and sex:

And here is a chart of the age range of respondents, by sex:

And finally, a chart showing the average years of looping experience, by primary instrument of the respondent, and by sex:

Looping Devices:

Here are the Top 10 Looping Devices reported by the respondents, and the total number of devices reported:

2. Echoplex Digital Pro - 98
3. Line 6 DL-4 - 56
4. Digitech RDS 7.6 (or similar, incl PDS series) - 45
5. Ableton Live (software) - 44
6. Electrix Repeater - 43
7. Boss RC-20 (or RC-20XL) - 41
8. Lexicon Vortex - 37
9. Boss DD-3, 5 or 6 - 36
10. Boss DD-20 - 33
11. Electro Harmonix 16 Second Delay (new or reissue) - 26

And just to give you an example of the kind of things you can do with the PivotTable, here’s a chart of the Top 10 Looping Devices, totalled by age group:

Comparison to 2003 Survey Results:

The comparison of 2005 results with a similar survey taken in 2003 is very interesting. The complete 2003 Looper Survey results can be downloaded here, in PDF format.

Although the methods were different, the online communities polled were the same (Looper’s Delight mailing list, the HCFX forum at Harmony Central), and the resulting increase in respondents is striking - it basically doubled (94 in 2003, 182 in 2005).

Here’s a summary comparsion of 2003 vs. 2005. Note a couple of clear trends:

• The number of respondents doubled
• The number of devices per person went up, from 3.3 in 2003 to 5.1 in 2005
• The Echoplex Digital Pro stayed at the top of the list
• The Electrix Repeater dropped significantly, overtaken by the Line 6 DL-4, Ableton Live, and some sort of strange nostalgia for the Digitech RDS or PDS units
• The Lexicon Vortex rose in popularity, while the Lexicon Jamman fell completely off of the Top 10
• The Boss DD units (DD-20, DD3, 5 and 6) all moved into the Top 10, pushing the Boss RC-20 off of the list
• The Electro-Harmonix 16 Second reissue made a big enough splash to enter the Top 10 in 2005

2003 Looper Survey results:

 

94 people responded
310 total devices were reported
(3.3 devices per person)

2. Echoplex Digital Pro = 68 devices
3. Electrix Repeater = 36 devices
4. Line6 DL-4 Delay Modeler = 33 devices
5. Lexicon Jamman = 19 devices
6. Kaoss Pad I or II = 11 devices
7. Ableton Live = 11 devices
8. Boomerang/Boomerang + = 10 devices
9. Akai Headrush - 6 devices
10. Boss RC-20 - 6 devices
11. Lexicon Vortex - 6 devices

In 2005’s survey, these were the results:

 

182 people responded
922 total devices were reported
(5.1 devices per person)

2. Echoplex Digital Pro - 98 devices
3. Line 6 DL-4 - 56 devices
4. Digitech RDS 7.6 (or similar, incl PDS series) - 45 devices
5. Ableton Live (software) - 44 devices
6. Electrix Repeater - 43 devices
7. Boss RC-20 (or RC-20XL) - 41 devices
8. Lexicon Vortex - 37 devices
9. Boss DD-3, 5 or 6 - 36 devices
10. Boss DD-20 - 33 devices
11. Electro Harmonix 16 Second Delay (new or reissue) - 26 devices

In November 2003, I took on the task of tallying responses to a question on the Looper’s Delight mailing list that the illustrious Rick Walker posted. The question went something like this:

What looping gear do all of you own and use?

Wow. About one month, 96 respondents, and one big bottle of Aleve later, I had tallied all of the answers into a spreadsheet and run some simple statistics on them. The results are still available here, at the Looper’s Delight File Library (a feature that I’m proud to have contributed to the list also!). The file is in the “Tools and Utilities” section of the library.

I just noticed a few days ago that the 2 year anniversary of this survey was upon us. In 2 years, a whole lot of new looping gear has become available, and looping has become a much more common concept among mainstream musicians. It seemed like it was time to do the survey again. Oh, my aching head.

This time around I’m a little older (2 years, to be exact) and a little wiser (not much, to be exact). I’ve setup an online survey to handle the task, and this time we’ll actually get some additional statistics (age, gender, location, primary instrument, years of looping).

If:

• you stumble upon this blog and you’re not already aware of the survey
• you do live looping, even if it’s in your bedroom
• you have about 3 minutes to spare

…then please go to the survey and fill it out. The more, the loopier.

I’ll start providing some simple statistics here in a few weeks, and I’ll leave the survey open until the end of January 2006, at least. Should be interesting to see how the data has shifted, and how well some of the new looping tools are penetrating the market.

I’ll admit that I’m a gearhead when it comes to guitars. I love noodling with new and interesting effects, amplifiers and the guitars themselves. However, I also consider myself to have reasonably good taste in guitar tone, and there are a lot of things that just done survive the honeymoon period because in the end - they don’t sound good.

Well, here’s a pleasant surprise that has survived the honeymoon period. It’s called the Jet Slide, and it’s a nifty little innovation that overcomes a lot of the problems that guitarists have faced when trying to incorporate slide guitar into their live playing.

See, the classic guitar slide is a cylinder of either glass, metal, bone or ceramic that slips over one of your fingers on your fretting hand. But that can present a real problem when you want to alternate between slide guitar and traditional guitar playing in a single song. Usually this means having the slide somewhere close to you as you play, and having to quickly grab the slide, put it on, play the slide part, take it off, put it down (or throw it down!), and get back to playing traditional guitar - all without missing too many beats (especially if you’re the only guitar player in the band). It’s nerve wracking, and very prone to mistakes. Who needs that?

Here’s what a traditional slide looks like while being played:

I’ll admit, I have seen a few pros who can somehow play traditional, fretted guitar while they still have one of those bulky cylinders on one of their fingers. Usually, they accomplish this by putting the slide on their pinky, and using the other 3 fingers to fret. I tried hard to figure out how to do that, but I just couldn’t make it happen with any effectiveness. I felt like I was giving up control of the slide having it on my pinky, and I still didn’t have full use of the other 3 fingers. That’s a no-win compromise.

The Jet Slide is an ingenious device that makes it easy to leave the slide on your hand while still being able to play fretted chords. I could try to explain it further, but you know what they say - a picture is worth a thousand words:

See how he’s able to fret some notes, and then flip his finger into position and have the Jet Slide pop into place, ready to play slide guitar? It really works. And it’s not hard to learn at all. No steep learning curve or anything - just do what comes naturally, and the slide pops into place.

The real secret is that little tab of metal sticking out from the slide. It’s hard to see in the animated picture, but these two pics make it very clear:

Your pinky naturally grabs on to the metal tab as you move your hand from a normal fretting position into a traditional slide guitar position. To get back to fretting, all you have to do is kinda pop your fingers away from the fretboard, and your pinky releases the metal tab, letting the Jet Slide fall away from your fingers (ready to be grabbed again).

Simple. Effective. And damned cheap.

That’s the way I wish all of my guitar toys were!

In this second part of an ongoing series regarding “live looping”, I’d like to cover the basic functions that make a looper the powerful and creative tool that I love so much. I’m going to cover these functions in their basic forms in this post, with only quick references to the more complex things that can be accomplished with this simple toolset. In a future post I’ll cover ways to use these functions in a lot more detail.

Also note that I am using some diagrams from the manual of the illustrious and powerful Gibson Echoplex Digital Pro (EDP). Many thanks to Kim Flint, Mathias Grob, Warren Sirota and Gibson for designing and creating this tool. In my opinion, the EDP is still the very best looping tool available. After you read this article and have a feel for the basic functions of a looper, you might get the courage to browse through the EDP users manual (PDF format, 442 kb) and see all of the things that this powerful unit can deliver. If you do, get ready for mind blowing functionality (and a steep price tag!) - you have been warned!

So let’s jump right in…

Record

The most fundamental tool in the looping kit is the Record function. In the context of live looping, a looper is only useful if the start and end points of a loop can be defined on the fly using the record function. This is critical - if the looper requires that a tempo be established beforehand, and then forces the start and end points of the record function into the pre-defined tempo - you’ve got a looper that won’t work well for live looping techniques. There are a number of loopers on the market that work in this (IMO) flawed way - the Electro Harmonix reissue of the 16 Second Delay, and the Boss RC-20 and RC-20XL are two that I’m aware of. Pre-defined tempos may work in studio situations - but they fail miserably in live looping.

So, in the ideal situation, the record function allows you to press it once to start recording the loop, and press it again to stop recording the loop, define the end point, and immediately begin playing the loop back.

As an example, let’s say I’m playing a guitar part in 4/4 time, and I want to capture one measure of that playing and play it back as a loop. I’d press record on the first downbeat of the measure (beat 1), play the guitar, and then press record on the first downbeat of the second measure. This is an important concept in live looping - the timing of the record function is critical in capturing a loop that sounds good. Notice that I pressed record the second time on the first downbeat of the second measure. This is because I want to capture everything that’s played throughout the entire measure into my loop.

Visually, it might look something like this:

beats:   ONE - two - three - four - ONE - two - three - four
actions: RECORD                     RECORD
sound:   live playing...............loop starts playing back

Hitting those record functions “on the ONE” is critical when you are trying to loop musical material that has a strong rhythmic feel. This is a common problem experienced by people just starting out with looping. Good live looping requires a strong sense of rhythm and time.

Overdub

The second magic wand of live looping is the overdub function. Just as it’s name implies, this function allows you to overdub a second layer of audio into your loop. While a loop is playing, pressing overdub begins the process of adding new sounds to your loop. Pressing it again stops the overdub process.

Here is a graphical representation of how overdub works. The “button actions” (O) show where the overdub button is pressed:

Overdub is where much of the power of live looping begins. Using this tool, I can capture a loop and then begin to play harmony or syncopation over the top of that loop, and capture that new material into the original loop. Within a few passes, I can transform a series of simple melodic lines into a symphony of sounds.

Multiply

Again, much as it’s name would imply, Multiply allows you to layer (for example) a 4 measure melody over your original 1 measure loop. In effect, the multiply function “multiplies” the original loop while it captures your new live playing, with the final result being a single loop that contains multiple copies of the original loop, mixed with your newly played material.

Sound complicated? Let’s see if this graphic helps. The “button actions” (M) show where the multiply button is pressed during this example. What you’ll notice is that the existing loop is repeated 4 times, while new material is layered on top, and the final result is a single loop with 4 copies of the original, plus all of the new material:

The multiply function makes it easy to make interesting, changing loops from a few simple building blocks. Multiply ensures that you’re not stuck with the length of your original loop as you continue to play - you can multiply the material out into longer and longer pieces.

Feedback

The last basic function that I’ll cover in this post is Feedback. Feedback is sometimes called “regeneration”, and refers to the amount of loop signal that is fed into the loop from one pass to the next. A feedback setting of 100% means that the loop would never fade away - each pass of the loop would be at the same volume as the original loop. Feedback settings of less than 100% allow the loop to fade over time. A feedback setting of 0% would let the loop play only once before it disappeared completely.

Feedback is a powerful control in live looping, because it allows the musician to “evolve” the loop as it plays. With feedback settings of less than 100%, the musician can feed new material into the loop (typically, using overdub), and that loop will slowly change as old material fades away and new material takes over in prominence.

Feedback settings of less than 100% are also a great way to “fade out” a loop at the end of a piece.

Other Functions

Most looping devices have other functions available that allow even more control over how sound is captured and played back in a loop. Among these functions:

• Retrigger - allows the musician to restart the loop from it’s beginning with a single button press. Note that this function is absolutely critical to using a looper in a multi-musician or band setting. Being able to restart the loop on the band’s downbeat when the band and the loop drift apart is essential for keeping the two in sync. Notice that I said when, not if! This drifting will happen, no matter how “tight” the band is. I recommend that anyone who is considering using live looping in a band context always purchase a looper which has a loop retrigger function, otherwise, you and your bandmates will quickly become frustrated.
• Undo - allows material that was previously added to the loop to be removed. Depending on the sophistication (and onboard memory) of the looping device, many layers of undo may be available. This can allow the musician to incrementally remove many layers of overdubs, and return the loop to it’s original status.
• Insert - allows new material to be inserted into the loop, shifting the existing material forward, and resulting in a new loop that is longer than the original loop (longer by the amount of time inserted into the loop). This graphic helps explain how the insert function behaves:
  
• Reverse - allows the loop to be reversed, creating all kinds of beautiful and haunting sounds
• HalfSpeed - allows the loop to be slowed to half speed (and/or to be sped up to double speed)

I’ll discuss some of these functions in more detail in future posts on this subject. All of these functions have their own unique possibilities. Used wisely, the list above can be enough to provide a lifetime of sonic exploration and discovery.

Too many amps. Anyone need a Roland JC-120?

I’ve been a non-professional, or occasionally “semi-pro” guitar player for over 25 years now (ouch!). I’ve played in all kinds of bands - from cover/dance bands to an all-original punk rock band. But, since the first time I heard Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s landmark “No Pussyfooting” LP, I have always been intrigued… no, make that obsessed… with the concept of live looping. I’ll explain a little more about what live looping really is later in this post.

This blog topic will be devoted to a series of articles about live looping, my personal experiences, and some of the knowledge I’ve acquired on the subject over the last 5 or 6 years. Once I get my home recording situation worked out, I’ll also include audio clips either illustrating concepts or just showing off The purpose of these articles is to help others who might be interested in live looping by sharing some of my own learnings and techniques, and to expose the reader to other live looping artists.

So, let’s start this one out with some basics:

What is live looping?

Live looping is a term that refers to capturing live audio, as it is performed, and looping that audio as a component of a live performance. This distinguishes live looping from the concept of playing pre-recorded material, one-shot samples, or other forms of traditional studio sampling work. The performer starts with a clean slate, and builds one or more (sometimes many more!) loops from the immediate material they play.

It can be argued that “looping”, or repetition, as a music composition technique is as old as music itself. Almost all cultures create music that feature a strong sense of structure through repetition, especially rhythmic repetition and commonly, melodic repetition. Again, the distinction for live looping is that the repeated material is captured immediately, at the time of it’s creation, and replayed immediately as part of the composition.

Capturing audio material at the time of performance is at once ultimate freedom, and potential hazard. The performer can decide at any point what sounds to capture and loop, yet those decisions are relatively immediate and irreversible. If you decide to loop a phrase and you “screw it up”, that screw-up becomes part of the live material. There are some ways to mitigate this hazard (with techniques like “Undo”), but we’ll cover those in a future post. Suffice it to say that live looping presents a whole new set of challenges and opportunities to the performing artist, beyond those always present in traditional live performance.

Who “invented” live looping

Now there’s a question that’s likely to cause some debate. Without a detailed treatise on the advancement of recording technologies, and the various communities of artists across the globe who were involved in those advancements, it would be impossible to provide a clear picture of just who and how live looping became a performance technique. For this simple little blog post, I’ll simply say that the early incarnations of live looping probably came from extensions of the pioneering work done by minimalist composers Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Various artistic communities and collectives adopted and extended the things that Riley and Reich were doing with live tape loops in the 1960’s. Probably the most often cited example of “modern” live looping was the 1972-73 Fripp/Eno experiment, later released as “No Pussyfooting”. Fripp and Eno used two reel-to-reel tape machines to simultaneously record and playback audio from a single, physical tape loop which ran through both machines. The resulting approach was later dubbed “Frippertronics” by Robert Fripp, and showcased by Fripp throughout the 70’s and 80’s. Fripp has since moved his live looping to digital technologies, and re-termed the work “Soundscapes” - but the techniques are quite similar to the original pioneering work of the 70s.

What equipment can you use to accomplish live looping?

In it’s simplest form, live looping can be accomplished with a simple delay device. Sending live audio into a “delay line”, and allowing that audio to repeat as part of your performance is live looping in it’s most fundamental form. There are still a lot of artists who use this simple technique today. There are also the techniques mentioned above - dual tape player/recorders operating on a single loop of tape. However, delay and sampling technologies have advanced significantly in the last 15 years, and there are a number of dedicated or semi-dedicated looping devices available on the open market.

The most popular mass-market loopers are:

• Line 6 DL-4
• Boomerang Phrase Sampler
• Boss RC-20 Loop Station
• Akai Headrush
• Boss DD-20 Giga Delay
• Gibson Echoplex Digital Pro
• TC Electronic 2290 Digital Delay

There are many more live looping devices available. This list is by no means comprehensive. For more information on these and other looping tools, try looking at the Looper’s Delight website, specifically the “Tools of the Trade” section.

Well, that’s a good start on explaining what I mean by “live looping”. My fingers and my brain are tired, and I’m inspired to go do a little looping myself!, so I’ll sign off on this post. In future articles I’ll begin to explain some of the basic and advanced techniques that I and others use to accomplish live looping, and some of the issues that come up when using live looping in a band context.

If any of you are actually still reading this, shoot me a comment about what you’d like to hear relative to live looping, and I’ll make sure that I address it.

Loop on!

There has been a flurry of speculation at both Harmony Central and Looper’s Delight about the apparent upcoming release of the Roland/Boss RC-50. As of this writing, the only official information available seems to be at the Boss Japan site.

The RC-50 looks to be the (very) big brother of the RC-20XL looper that Boss has had out for a while now. As a connoisseur of live looping, I was never impressed with the RC-20 (or the XL upgrade) because of it’s lack of some basic features: feedback control, loop restart, forced tempo quantization, no MIDI, etc. The RC-50 looks like it might improve on some of these shortcomings, but frankly it’s just hard to tell right now (even if you speak Japanese!).

One of the Japanese members of Looper’s Delight provided the mailing list with a non-machine translation of the info at the Boss site. Thanks to “ysh” for this:

Here’s a quick summary of the text, sans the marketing blurb. The pictures
on the web + just the FAQ section may give a better overview of the unit’s
capabilities than the text on the main page.

The unit was shown at Tokyo’s NAMM-equivalent show; the website still
doesn’t have any pricing or ship date info.

* * *

Main Page:

-Works like 3 RC-20XLs
-Each “Phrase” can be independently recorded/played back/overdubbed
-On/off states of each “Phrase” can be controlled freely
-A “Patch” consists of three “Phrases” (i.e. it’s a 3-stereo-track-looper)

-Two “Play Modes”;
a. Multi Mode - 3 Phrases in a Patch can be combined freely
b. Single Mode - Switching between 3 Phrases

-Max recording time: 24 min (stereo)/49 min (mono)
-one shot/reverse/fade in “etc.” playback modes
-Fade outs and Loop ending settings can be adjusted even when phrases are
not being played back

-Sub Out can be assigned to specific Phrases or the guide tone
-Max. 4 exp.pedals/footswitches

-Playback speed can be altered in realtime, by tap tempo or via expression
pedal.
-Can force Phrases of different tempos to play back in the same tempo
(”Tempo Sync” feature)
-Loop Quantize during recording
-MIDI tempo sync

-USB Connectivity
-Settings can be stored on computer
-WAV import/export (16 bit/44.1kHz/Stereo/Mono)
-Comes with a Loop Phrase CD

FAQ:

1.
What features are new on the RC-50 compared to the RC-20XL?

Max. recording time: 49min (mono)
Stereo
3 simultaneous Phrases max.
Storage of 297 Phrases max.
379 rhythm patterns
7 pedals
Connectivity for 4 external footswitches
Expression (?)
USB
Sub Outs
MIDI In/Out
Playback Speed Realtime Control
MIDI tempo sync

2.
What can you control off the expression pedals?
Phrase Level,
Phrase Pan,
Current Level (the level of the “Current Phrase”)
Current Pan (panning of the “Current Phrase”)
Guide Level
Patch Level
Patch Tempo
note: the “Original Tempo” cannot be controlled from the exp.ped.

Level and Tempo ranges are as follows:
Level: 0 - 200
Tempo: 40-250

3.
So how does the “tempo” feature work in relation to playback speed? Can
Phrases with different tempos be played back at the same tempo, or in other
words, in sync?

“Original Tempo” / “Patch Tempo”:

When a Phrase is recorded, its tempo settings are stored as an “Original
Tempo”.
Every patch can have a tempo setting independent of the Original Tempos, and
this Patch info is called the “Patch Tempo”.

Every Phrase may have a different tempo. Let’s take this example –

Phrase 1: 100bpm
Phrase 2: 120bpm
Phrase 3: 80bpm

In such a situation, we don’t know what the master tempo is. This is where
the “Patch Tempo” comes in. You can have each Phrase lock to the Patch
Tempo, or not. Elaborating on the above scenario, you can have a setting
like this:

Phrase 1: 100bpm / Tempo Sync: ON
Phrase 2: 120bpm / Tempo Sync: ON
Phrase 3: 80bpm / Tempo Sync: OFF

When you apply a Tempo Sync, Phrases having different Original Tempos will
play in sync, with the same Tempo.
Assuming a Patch Tempo of 120, playback of the above example will be as follows:

Phrase 1: Playback speed will be faster than the original recording
(100bpm), at 120bpm.
Phrase 2: Playback speed happens to be the same as the original (120bpm).
Phrase 3: Tempo Sync is off, so playback speed will not be altered.

-Expression Pedal Control of Patch Tempo
The Patch Tempo can be altered in realtime from an expression pedal such as
the RC-50.
max. and min. values for the tempo are user-defineable.

4.
When recording on top of a prerecorded Phrase, can I record just the new
stuff onto a different phrase?

Yep.
In Multi Mode, the playback/recording of three different snippets can be set
totally independent of each other.

An example would be to record on Phrase 1, then record something on Phrase 2
while Phrase 1 is playing back.

You can also overdub on the same Phrase, if you so wish.

5.
Can you record simultaneously off the Inst., mic, and Aux inputs?

Yes. All inputs will be mixed and recorded within the same Phrase.
Adjustments can be made from the Input Level section.

It’s not possible to record the different input sources on independent
tracks (Phrases) though.

6.
Terminology - What’s a “Phrase”, “Patch”, and “Current Phrase”?

Phrase: Think of it as one loop. A “phrase” is Roland lingo for a loop.
Patch: It’s a collection of three loops. RC-50 has 99 Patches.
Current Phrase: To record a loop, you need to specify where you’re
recording. The selected Phrase is a “Current Phrase”. Rec/Play/Overdub
operations are always applied on the Current Phrase. Likewise, the
indicators show the status for the Current Phrase.

One selects the Current Phrase by stepping on the Phrase 1/2/3 switch.

7.
What controls are available via MIDI?

-External MIDI sync
-Program Change/Control Change transmission: When switching a Patch, Program
Change messages are sent. External footswitch and expression pedal
operations are also sent as Continuous Controller messages.
-Pach Changes from external controllers
-Other operations from external controllers (CC#1/CC#7/CC#80): Via MIDI, one
can adjust parameters that can’t be controlled from the RC-50’s footswitches
or pedals.

Both Global and Patch settings can be altered via CC’s. It’s possible to
specify whether every parameter is Global or applied only on a Patch.

8.
So what can you do via USB?

- Backup of user data onto a computer
- Recovery, by sending settings store on a computer back onto an RC-50
- Export of RC-50 phrase data onto a computer (WAV)
- Import of WAV files in a computer, onto an RC-50

RC-50 acts as a USB mass storage class device.
It doesn’t act as a USB MIDI device.

9.
Can I punch in sections of Phrase while overdubbing?

Yes.
There are 3 Overdubbing Modes, and one of them is “Momentary Punch-in”.

a. Overdub - Records material on top an existing Phrase.
b. Replace - Overwrites material onto a Phrase; acts like a single-tap delay.
c. Momentary Punch-In - Overwrites material only while the Rec/Play/Overdub
pedal is depressed. Great for correcting parts of a Phrase.

There’s an Overdub Mode switch dedicated to the feature.