Ableton Link (aka The Time Police)

Ableton Link keeps OnSong's tempo & beat vibin' in sync with Ableton Live & other Link-enabled apps & devices on the same Wi-Fi network. Spoiler alert: there's nothin' to pair & zero cables. Apps on the network just kinda... find each other & join a shared session automatically. ZOMG magic! Once you're rollin' in a session, literally everything in the OnSong^® app that follows the beat clock — the metronome, the drum machine, tempo-synced delays, arpeggios — is countin' the exact same beat as everyone else in the room. Crazy, amirite?

Turn This Bad Boy On

Ableton Link lives in Doin's ▸ MIDI ▸ Ableton Link. The screen's got three parts, y'all:

• Ableton Link — the actual on/off switch, straight from Ableton's own fancy panel. It tells ya how many apps are hangin' out in the session once you're connected.
• Sync Mode — how OnSong's tempo vibes with everyone else's. Peep below.
• Status — the real-time connection tea: Connected when there's at least one other app, Searchin'… while Ableton Link is turned on but feelin' lonely, & Off when it's nappin'.

Psst—you can also snag it from the AuxDock by flappin' Beat Sync on any panel & the lil' chip that pops up serves Ableton Link… as a shortcut. Ez pz.

Sync Mode: Your Tempo Drama, Explained

Ableton Link itself? Totally leaderless — no master, no drama queens. Anyone can tweak the shared tempo. Sync Mode is OnSong's own rulebook for dealin' with that chaos:

• Both — trades tempos both ways like you're at a barter fair. Changin' tempo in the OnSong^® app changes it for everyone, & if someone else nudges the session, OnSong adopts it too. The default, & it's true peer-to-peer vibes.
• Lead — OnSong^® app is the boss. It pushes its tempo to everyone else, & if a peer tries to change things, OnSong reasserts dominance & resets the phase. Use this when the OnSong^® app is literally the beat that's keepin' the band from fallin' apart.
• Follow — OnSong^® app just vibes along. It never pushes its tempo, instead just acceptin' whatever the session's doin'. Use this when someone else owns the tempo & OnSong is just a passenger.

The mode sticks around even after you disconnect, so a rig set to Follow stays follow-y next week. Convenient, right?

What Gets Weird While You're Connected

• The shared timeline runs the show. A Link session keeps OnSong's beat clock thumpin' even when nothin' local is playin', which is why those beat-sync LEDs suddenly start strobin' the moment you connect. Spooky.
• Tempo changes go viral. In Both or Lead, messin' with OnSong's tempo — by tappin' it, loadin' a song with its own tempo, or triggerinʹ a section's {tempo:} — yeets the whole session into a new tempo. Wild.
• In Follow, the song's tempo gets ghosted in favor of the session's vibe. That's literally the point of the mode, but it's worth knowin' if you open a chart & the metronome's playin' at some random speed that's not what's written on the page.

What You Gotta Have

• Every device's gotta be on the same Wi-Fi network, & that network's gotta let devices actually see each other. Guest networks & fancy venue networks? They love blockin' that exact thing, which is why your session's probably screamin' into the void.
• No internet needed — Link just needs a local network, no router uplink required. Makes a janky travel router a straight-up reliable stage setup.
• Link's peer-to-peer, so there's no "host" device that needs to start first. Whatever order, fam.

If Status is stuck on Searchin'… & another Link app's clearly runnin', the network is 99.9% the culprit, not the apps bein' broken. Slap both devices on the same access point — or an ad-hoc one you control — before you start blowin' up tech support, mkay?