Random LFO behaviour for sample chains

Elektron Gear Analog Rytm
#1

I have some sample chains previously used in an MPC, which I wanted to bring into the AR. They are not sample ‘hits’ but weird sound passages of 4 bars each.

I don’t ever want silence, so my thinking was to set the sample start point to the beginning of the last four bars (118 of 120). Then use negative modulation, so that zero modulation would be the last piece in the chain, but any other modulation would be earlier in the chain.

However the random LFO puzzles me. I set a random LFO to the sample start point, then started adjusting parameters - and right off the bat, if the Mode is “hold” and speed is 1, and depth is zero, it still provides random start points. I would assume depth of zero would not provide any modulation, but it does.

Then setting full negative depth, sometimes seems to produce positive modulation.

Is the random LFO just sending random positive and negative values - so negative depth just brings all positive numbers down to zero? So half the values are always zero?

Has anyone modulated sample chains with a random LFO?

#2

After further tinkering, I believe the random LFO gives both positive and negative values, and the Depth being set full negative or full positive doesn’t seem to change that, only how much it affects the destination parameter.

So for random sample chains, I had to set the sample start to the half way point (60) and then back up one sample chain block to 56. This way the random will never go higher than 116 and give you a short bar, although the full random effect is skewed slightly to blocks in the first half of the sample.