Diststoch

The same breakpoint waveform, with the tether removed. Each breakpoint walks wherever its own chaotic step takes it, and the only thing keeping the waveform inside a range is what happens when it reaches the edge. The amplitude bounds are not a limiter: they are part of the instrument, and each of the two can behave differently.

The dials are barrierLo and barrierHi. 0 reflects the walk back inside, 1 wraps it round to the other bound, 2 holds it against the edge, and 3 throws it to a random place in the range. A wrapping bound tears the waveform, a holding bound flattens it into a plateau, and a reflecting bound keeps it continuous. Set the two differently and the waveform becomes asymmetric, which is audible as a shift in weight rather than in pitch.

Start with the gain low.

breakpoints bounds steps drawn, audio output

presets:

randomise:

bounds ampLo ampHi barrierLo barrierHi

step ampKick ampDist ampDistP knum

duration durKick durDist durDistP interp

rate minFreq maxFreq gain

Reading the panels. The top panel is one cycle of the waveform between its two bounds, and the bounds are drawn where they actually are, so a narrow range is visible as a narrow band. The middle panel is a histogram of the steps the walk has actually been given, which is what ampDist and ampDistP change. The bottom panel is the audio.

ampDist 0–6 is linear, Cauchy, logistic, hyperbolic cosine, arcsine, exponential and sinus, the distribution set of dynamic stochastic synthesis. The steps are not drawn from noise but from the rotor's own angle, which is why the default law already piles them at the extremes: a third of the steps land in the outer eighth. Cauchy pulls them back toward zero, arcsine pushes them further out, and sinus is not a distribution at all but one fixed step repeated. The duration walk has its own law and its own bound, so the period drifts independently of the shape.