A Buchla sequencer jump can carry a certainty percentage, executing the branch only some of the time

On the Buchla 200e sequencers (249e/251e-style programming), each stage can hold a jump instruction that redirects the sequence to another stage — either relative to the current stage or to an absolute stage number. Crucially, every jump carries a certainty value from 1 to 100: the probability that the jump actually fires on any given pass. At certainty 100 the jump is deterministic; at 85 it fires roughly five times in six, otherwise the sequence falls through to the next stage. This turns a fixed step sequence into a stochastic branching structure, generating long non-repeating variations from a compact program without hand-editing every pass. Jumps can be combined with per-stage loop counters and conditional jumps (jump only if the loop counter is non-zero). This is the same controlled-randomness philosophy as the 266e Source of Uncertainty, applied to sequence order rather than voltage.

Examples

Program stage 8 to jump back to stage 1 with certainty 50 — half the passes replay stages 1-8, half continue to stage 9, so an 8-step phrase sometimes doubles in length. Set certainty 100 for an unconditional loop, or pair with a loop counter for JmpTo-if-LC>0 behavior.

Assessment

Explain the musical difference between a stage jump at certainty 100 and at certainty 50. Describe how a probabilistic jump plus a loop counter can produce phrase lengths that vary run to run.