Tap-Tap-Tap-Speed-Thingy

The tempo picker shows up when you desperately need a metronome, when you're mashing on that metronome live bar button like it owes you money, or when you're tweaking tempos in the Metadata Editor inside the Song Editor. It lets you set the tempo in beats per minute (BPM). Riveting stuff.

Setting The Time Signature

Wanna change the time signature? Tap that time signature chillin' in the upper left corner to summon the time signature picker. OnSong defaults to 4/4 because, y'know, music math or whatever. OnSong uses the 4/4 time signature by default.

Selecting Subdivisions

The metronome's all "quarter notes, quarter notes" by default. Tap that icon up top right & cycle through the subdivision buffet: whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, eighth note shuffle & sixteenth notes. Got a weird compound time signature like 6/8, 9/8 or 12/8 locked in? The quarter note morphs into a dotted quarter note. Freakin' magic.

Adjusting Settings

Wanna tweak the metronome's audio & visual vibes? Tap the wrench icon up top right on the metronome live bar menu. This opens a screen with all your metronome settings. Tap Done to save your changes (congrats on adulting), or Cancel to chicken out & keep things as they were.

Setting the Tempo

Slide your finger left & right like you're scratching an invisible record to decrease or increase tempo in big sloppy strokes. Tap the left/bottom or right/top to nudge the tempo by whatever beat increment you set in Quantize BPM. Default is one whole beat, because we're not monsters.

Or—& this is kinda cool—tap in the middle to literally tap out the song's tempo. The time signature gets factored in for those compound eighth note timings. Your tapped tempo gets quantized based on Quantize BPM.

Starting & Stopping

Here's the deal: we made tapping & holding the live bar button start the metronome immediately because, y'know, latency bad. The operating system needs a hot sec to figure out if you're holding or just being clumsy. The tempo picker's got a play/stop button so you can start, stop, adjust, & double-check your BPM without havin' a meltdown.

Changing Tempo Limits

Tempos live between 40 & 200 BPM. Go below 40? Boom. Tempo becomes "None" & yeets itself outta your song. Wanna change the min/max? Head to Settings » Live Settings » Metronome » Audio Settings » BPM Settings. Thrilling navigation, I know.

Listen For Tempo

OnSong^® can literally listen to find your tempo using MIDI & the built-in mic (or whatever audio input you've got). Tap this & it'll ask permission to snoop on your microphone, then start eavesdroppin'. First it listens for MIDI clock signals. If that's a no-go, it'll try detectin' beat info from whatever music is playin' nearby. Basically, it's a tiny musical detective.