Is the random chord really random

[nevertooold]

For me, the random chord trainer seems to always give the chords in the same order whenever I start the application.  Does anyone else experience this?

I love the app, but I wish the random order was truly random.

[bradt]

Weird.
Nothing in computers is ever truly random though. What exactly do you do for this to happen? If you deviate from that does it randomize properly?

I don't know anything much about the app. I am just curious.

[nevertooold]

My current set is to practice with chords D, A, E, Amin, Dmin, G, C, G7, D7.  Whenever I start, the app gives me G - C, then G7 - Amin, then Amin - C.  This is consistently repeatable for me when the app is truly closed and restarted.

[SiegeFrog]

My current set is to practice with chords D, A, E, Amin, Dmin, G, C, G7, D7.  Whenever I start, the app gives me G - C, then G7 - Amin, then Amin - C.  This is consistently repeatable for me when the app is truly closed and restarted.

Have you tried changing your chord lineup at all? Take 1 or 2 of them out for a session. That should scramble the random number generator some. I know for me that I tend to want to focus on five changes a session, so  once I have 9-10 chords in my repertoire, I want a little more control of the selection. Once you're in Stager 4, you probably don't want to be doing A-E changes much anymore.

[m_c]

I know this is an old topic, but I figure I'd explain the reasons behind this, as I've had to deal with this problem while coding microcontrollers.

Nothing in the world of electronics or software is ever truely random.
Random numbers are generated using an algorithm, which takes certain inputs as a 'seed', then passes that seed through the algorithm to generate a 'random' number.
What gets used as that seed depends on who wrote the algorithm, and if there is the possibility to set the seed to something other than default (or if the coder has actually bothered to set the seed to something more random). If you back to the days of the orginal Apple Mac's, you could take the same random generating programme and ran it on a bunch of identical Macs, then you'd get the same sequence of numbers on all of them. IIRC the old Mac algorithm copied a set memory location as the initial seed, so if all computers loaded the same software, the initial seed would always be the same.

Modern basic random generator algorithms are better, however you can still end up with the problem of a fixed sequence of numbers, unless you use something a bit more random to seed the generator. Personally, on a phone or computer, I'd use some basic algorithm that took the date/time to generate a suitable seed to create something a bit more random.

[Majik]

Modern basic random generator algorithms are better, however you can still end up with the problem of a fixed sequence of numbers, unless you use something a bit more random to seed the generator. Personally, on a phone or computer, I'd use some basic algorithm that took the date/time to generate a suitable seed to create something a bit more random.

+1 to all this...

But I think it's also important to realise that humans are terrible judges of randomisation. Our minds are programmed to try to detect and identify patterns.

Which is why (as one example) we see images in clouds, tea leaves, or slices of toast when these are all really just random patterns.

Cheers,

Keith