Audible generative processes should change gradually so listeners can track the transformation

Steve Reich’s 1968 essay ‘Music as a Gradual Process’ argues that a musical process should unfold slowly enough that the listener perceives both its current state and its motion at once. Applied to modular sequencers: locking a shift-register sequence and letting it slip one bit at a time enacts this in hardware — the listener hears the loop, then notices individual notes changing, then recognises a new loop crystallising. The musically interesting zone is between locked stasis and full randomness, where the process is perceptible. This contrasts with jumping straight to a new random pattern, which destroys the sense of directed motion.

Examples

Set a shift-register sequencer to slip slowly and record several minutes: notice the original loop, the gradual mutation, and when it locks into a new loop. Compare with a fully random setting — can you track any process there?

Assessment

Why does a fully random sequencer feel less musical than a slowly slipping shift register, per the gradual-process principle? Give a non-modular example (e.g. tape phasing, canon).