Rhythm Randomizer
Generate random rhythmic patterns for practice, sight-reading, or breaking out of a groove you keep writing by accident. Set the time signature and grid, decide how busy and how syncopated it should be, then play it back.
What the Settings Actually Change
Subdivision is the grid the pattern is written on — eighths, sixteenths, or thirty-seconds. It sets the smallest interval that can hold a note, so it controls how fine the rhythm can get before density controls how full it gets.
Density is a range, not a value, and that distinction is the useful part. The generator draws a fresh density from inside the band on every click, so a band of 0.2–0.6 will hand you a sparse pattern one press and a busy one the next, from settings you never touched. Narrow the band when you want repeatable difficulty — say, a set of sight-reading exercises that are all about equally hard.
Syncopation raises the odds of a hit landing on an off-beat eighth instead of on the beat. It does not move notes off the beat; it makes the off-beats more likely to be chosen in the first place, which is the difference between a rhythm that sounds displaced and one that sounds wrong.
Accents are drawn separately from hits, so turning accent probability up makes the pattern louder in places without making it any busier. That separation is what lets you generate a dense sixteenth-note figure with only two or three accents in it — the shape most drum patterns actually have.
Using It for Practice
A generated bar is more useful than a written exercise for one specific reason: you have never seen it before. Sight-reading practice decays fast once you start recognising the material, and a randomizer never gives you the same page twice.
Set two measures of sixteenths, density around 0.3–0.5, and clap the pattern before pressing Play — then use the playback to check yourself rather than to learn it. Turn the accents up once the rhythms are comfortable and the exercise becomes a dynamics exercise using the same grid.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I read the generated pattern?
Each character is one step of the grid. A period is a rest, a lowercase x is an ordinary hit, an uppercase X is an accented hit, and a vertical bar marks the start of a measure. Spaces fall on quarter-note boundaries so you can count the beats without counting characters.
What does the density setting do?
Density is the probability that any given step is struck, and you set a range rather than a number — the generator draws a fresh density from inside that band each time. A narrow band gives you patterns of consistent busyness; a wide one gives you a mix of sparse and dense results from the same settings.
What counts as syncopation here?
The syncopation slider raises the odds of a hit landing on an off-beat eighth — the 'and' between beats — rather than on the beat itself. Turn it down and the pattern hugs the pulse; turn it up and the weight drifts off it, which is what makes a groove feel like it is pulling against the count.
Why is the first beat of every measure always struck?
A generated bar that opens on a rest reads as a mistake rather than as a musical choice, so every downbeat is struck and the accent draw decides how hard. Everything after the downbeat is genuinely random within your settings.
Can I hear the rhythm?
Yes. Press Play and the pattern loops at 120 BPM through your browser's audio engine, with accents pitched higher and louder than ordinary hits. The dots under the notation light up as it plays so you can follow along.