Jitter adds controlled timing randomness to a clock, from subtle humanization to complete chaos

A perfectly stable digital clock fires at mathematically exact intervals, which sounds mechanical. Jitter randomly perturbs the timing of each pulse, imitating a human performer’s drift. In Marbles the JITTER control spans a continuum: near zero the clock is perfectly stable; a little jitter simulates an instrumentalist lagging and catching up (a loose, humanized feel); fully up it dissolves rhythmic regularity into chaos, usable as a random trigger source. Jitter is applied to the clock, so all gates derived from that clock share the same timing perturbation. Note this differs from swing/shuffle, which is a fixed, deterministic offset of certain beats rather than a random one.

Examples

Low JITTER for a subtle push-pull, human feel on a drum gate; JITTER fully clockwise to turn a steady clock into arrhythmic random triggers.

Assessment

Explain the difference between deterministic swing/shuffle and random clock jitter, and give a situation where random jitter is the better choice.