Zoom H6 Metronome and Overdub Issues

Tuesday, May 27th, 2014

I had a lot of fun the other day shooting a self-duet video but I ran into a couple of snags trying to use the Zoom H6 metronome and overdub functions. Perhaps my experiences can help you out.

My self-duet on an old Hawaiian waltz, `Imi Au Ia `Oe, was shot at our rental cottage in Kailua, O`ahu, Hawai`i.

We’re less than a block from Kailua Beach, and the breeze is constantly rustling the palm and mango trees, so I used the Zoom H6 and plugged in the LR Baggs Lyric pickup in my Epiphone EF-500RCCE, but even though I set the metronome according to the manual, I got no beeps through the H6 monitor speaker. I had to go into overdub mode on the H6 before the metronome would work, but I couldn’t do that with my freshly formatted SD card! Without an existing project I couldn’t access the Project menu in the H6.

I finally figured out that I needed to create a dummy recording, just a few seconds of nothing, which gave me a project and access to the Project Menu. And then once Overdub was set in that menu, the metronome worked like a charm.

It occurred to me that other folks might hit the same snags, so I shot a quick video to demonstrate my workflow.

I was really happy with the results once I figured out how to use the tools and overdubbing on the Zoom H6. I hope you have a little fun with it too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2014 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Recording, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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  1. Pete Lambert said in post # 1,

    on June 22nd, 2018 at 10:44 pm

    Hi Fran,

    I found this really helpful in terms of setting up ready to overdub with the H6 – thank you …. but as yet I have not tried to overdub using my H6. I play fiddle and guitar and I’d like to make recordings with me playing both instruments. Do you have any tutorials that explain how to overdub please? If so I’d be most grateful. Very best wishes, Pete (York, Western Australia)

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About the Blog

    Howdy, my name is Fran Guidry and this is my Homebrewed Music blog.

    I play Hawaiian slack key guitar and recorded my solo acoustic CD at home. Most of the recording information I find on the internet seems focused on bands, drums, multitracking, and so on but my main focus is recording solo acoustic guitar. Lately I’ve been enjoying video recording along with audio, so that shows up in the blog as well.

    I’m also a guitar nut. I love big ones and little ones, handmades and factory guitars, cheap ones and expensive ones. So I’ll be sharing the fun of exploring guitars as well, along with the challenges of amplifying acoustic guitars for live performance.

    Welcome!

Philosophy

    My recording philosophy is pragmatic, skeptical, not super critical. After all, the performance is by far the most important component of a track, and every aspect of any recording is a matter of taste.

    But I do like to know “about stuff.” Back in hifi days I learned about double blind testing. I learned that we humans can easily hear differences that don’t really exist. The more I’ve learned about our human auditory system, the more I’m skeptical of what people say they hear, especially if they claim that a particular microphone or preamp or cable has some magical property.

    I’ve only been recording since 2001, and when I started I found the usual places on the internet. I sought advice and accepted it, thought I would improve my recordings by using more expensive equipment. It didn’t work.

    Two things that did seem to lead to better recordings were experience and room treatment. Getting an appealing sound is the combination of many small details, and learning those details only comes from experience. Amd the sound of the recording space is obviously a big factor.

    I’ve only recorded seriously using digital technology, but I remember trying to record rehearsals and gigs back in analog days. I don’t have any nostalgia for analog recording and playback systems at all. I think even low end digital systems can capture marvelous recordings. So when I look at gear, I look for good specs: low noise, broad flat frequency response, wide dynamic range, low distortion. I’m not interested in colorful components, mics and preamps with a sound, I want the sound to be the sound of my guitar.

    But the last word is that I’m just learning and I hope you find something useful in my posts.