Re: Boomerang III quick review

[Mark Hamburg <mark@grubmah.com>]

On Jun 11, 2011, at 2:33 PM, Mark Hamburg wrote:

> You can indeed press stack while recording. That's where the tap-dance 
> part comes in.
> 
>       Loop N switch to start recording
>       Stack (possibly a hold if you use the default configuration)
>       Loop N switch to finish loop and start stacking
>       Stack to stop stacking

And a further note for anyone else picking up the Boomerang III. This is 
what you need to do in serial mode. In parallel mode, you need to actually 
hit one more switch:

        Loop N switch to start recording
        Stack
        Loop N switch to mark it as stacking
        Loop N switch to finish loop and start stacking
        Stack to stop stacking

One can certainly learn to do this, but it's also definitely way more work 
than on many other loopers. (It also had me scratching my head as to 
whether I was failing to get some button presses to register until I 
figured it out. Time to go back and read the manual more thoroughly.)

That said, fitting the controls for a multi-track looper into just a few 
buttons is fundamentally hard and deciding what goes where depends on 
priorities. The Boomerang III identifies itself as a phrase sampler and 
optimizes for recording basic loops that can be turned on and off either 
as parallel loops or in serial and stacking and drones and so forth while 
supported are clearly not the design focus.

Mark