MusicReasonProgression and Arranging
Where should each chord change land?
Declare how many chord changes you have, how many bars they span, and which beat positions are allowed to carry a change. This tool allocates every change into a slot under a chosen distribution rule; it never claims the result has musical quality or groove.
Answer
Understand
Harmonic rhythm is simply how often the chords change relative to the bar and beat grid. This tool treats every bar's permitted beat positions as a fixed set of slots, then places the stated number of chord changes into those slots under a deterministic rule: equal mode spreads changes as evenly as possible across the whole span, and weighted mode fills the earliest available slots first.
Worked examples
Four chords over four bars of 4/4, allowed only on beat 1, allocates exactly one chord per bar in equal mode, since there are exactly four available slots for exactly four changes. If no beat position is permitted at all, there are no slots to place anything into, and the tool reports a clear no-solution state rather than silently ignoring the constraint.
Method and limitations
The tool first enumerates every (bar, permitted beat) pair as a slot. A chord count that exceeds the number of available slots, or an empty permitted-position list, both produce the no-solution state immediately. Otherwise, equal mode assigns each chord to the slot at a proportionally spaced index across the full slot list, and weighted mode fills slots in order starting from the first bar. Any slot left unassigned is reported explicitly rather than silently dropped. This tool has no concept of musical groove, syncopation feel, or genre convention; it only satisfies the stated numeric constraints.
Weighted mode is deliberately simple: it fills the earliest slots first rather than modeling any particular preference for where changes should cluster, since a genuinely style-aware weighting (front-loading a phrase, saving a change for a pickup beat) is a musical judgment outside this tool's stated scope. Two chords over four bars in equal mode will therefore land far apart (bar 1 and bar 3, roughly), while the same two chords in weighted mode land in the first two available slots instead, a clearly different and equally deterministic result.