Hi Victoria
It sounds as though you are trying to make the chord placement fit the melody, rather than fit the bars.

Simplistically, a chord might 'generally' be placed on the first beat of each bar. Placing the chords at different offsets in each bar is essentially like trying to lay down chords at a different time signature than the song itself.

Is the song a standard?

You should only need to decide on the tempo of the song, then place the chords to match the bars - more than 1 chord might be placed in a bar, that's OK, but the structure is such that the placement of the chords defines where beat 1 of each bar occurs. The placement of the chords should not define the tempo.

HTH
Trevor


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