Probabilistic variation at low amounts humanizes a pattern; at high amounts it thins or breaks it up

Probabilistic-variation (degrade) is the most-used generative primitive: one probability value controls how many events are randomly dropped or altered each cycle. At low amounts (roughly 5-20%) it humanizes — an occasional dropped hat, slight velocity or timing jitter — creating a groove feel without changing the pattern’s identity. At high amounts (roughly 50-80%) it thins and breaks up a pattern, useful for stripped sections or variation. The effect scales continuously from subtle humanization to near-silence, which is why one number buys endless subtle variation.

Examples

// Strudel: s(“hh8”).degradeBy(0.1) // humanize: occasional dropped hat s(“hh8”).degradeBy(0.6) // sparse/broken

Assessment

Describe what degradeBy(0.1) and degradeBy(0.7) each do to a hi-hat pattern, and why probabilistic-variation is called the most-used generative primitive.