Once you’ve wrapped your mind around the Scale-Chance relationship, the rest of the Random device is pretty easy to understand. The other setting that affects the notes that can get chosen for output is the Sign setting.
Both of the examples we looked at in the prior tip assumed a Sign of Add. This simply means that the random notes will always be higher in pitch than the incoming note. Let’s look at the other possibilities.
Again, we’ll assume an input note of C1, a Choices of 4 and a Scale of 3.
With Sign set to Sub, it’s pretty straightforward – each random
note will be below the pitch of the original note, so the choices look like this:
When Bi mode is selected, the random notes can be above or below the original note, so there’s a critical difference: there total number of random notes that can be output is doubled:
Next we’ll get into how knowing all this is actually useful…
