Section-based looping is one of the most musical things the RC-500 can do: track 1 holds your verse, track 2 holds your chorus, and a single footswitch press moves you between them. It only takes a handful of settings to get there, and one of them is a setting most people get wrong because of an argument they've read online. Here's exactly what I change.
Turn Loop Sync off on both tracks
Head into the track settings and scroll over to Loop Sync. By default this is set to ON, and you want it OFF — on both of your loop tracks, not just one. This is the setting that decides whether your two tracks are trying to lock to each other, and for verse/chorus switching they shouldn't be.
Set the play mode to single
Now go back into the memory settings, into Play, and set Play Mode to SINGLE. This tells the RC-500 to play only one loop at a time. The alternative, MULTI, lets track 1 and track 2 run simultaneously — which is a different job entirely.
With single selected, the behaviour is exactly what you want. Record a loop on track 1 and hit play, then move to track 2 and record a loop there: track 1 stops automatically during playback. From that point on you can move to loop A for your verse and loop B for your chorus, and the pedal handles stopping the other one for you.
Ignore the parallel versus series debate
There's a lot of argument online about whether you should change the track chain from parallel to series for this. You need to understand that it has nothing to do with how the two loop tracks sync with one another. All parallel and series do is change how the audio is routed between the two tracks. Leave it on parallel or switch it to series — either way, it will not affect how your A/B verse looping works.
Choose how the tracks change over
The last setting worth customising is track change. Set it to IMMEDIATE and the switch happens the moment you press. Set it to LOOP END and the RC-500 waits until the loop that's currently playing has finished its cycle before moving across. That second option is the more forgiving one if your timing on the footswitch isn't perfect.
Save it to the memory bank
Once it's set up, don't forget to save your changes to the memory bank. These are memory settings, which is the genuinely useful part — you can mix and match them per patch. Some of my patches sit on single for verse/chorus work, and others stay on multi.
Tip: Because play mode is saved per memory, build one patch for A/B section switching and a separate one for stacked multi-track loops. Switching songs then switches your whole looping behaviour with it.