Mental Exercise

[Josh Rowe]

Hello all!
Quite a while back there was a discussion of analog sequencers.

At the time, I thought a really neat feature on a sequencer would be 
a non-determinism (randomness) knob.  It would work like this:

When the knob was set to zero randomness, the sequencer would behave 
normally. ie: If the 'program' was set to UP, it would increment to 
the next stage on each clock pulse.  If the 'program' was set to 
DOWN, etc...

When the knob was set to full randomness, the sequencer would jump to 
a random stage when it received a clock pulse.

When there was only a little randomness, and for example the program 
was set to UP, the sequencer might skip 1 step up, then 3, then 2, 
then 3, etc.  There would be small amount of randomness in the choice 
of the next stage.

Ideally, the randomness would be fully continuous from none to 
completely random.

I though about how one might do this using analog circuitry or 
discrete logic, but to me the problem just seems to lend itself to a 
microprocessor design.

So, the question is: how would it be possible to implement this 
randomness feature using analog and/or discrete logic?

Of course, this is all in theory, so speculation is welcome.
Have fun, I know I will! :)
--------------------------------------------------------
Josh Rowe
jrowe at everest.acpl.lib.in.us