This excerpt from Bitwig's Modular Concepts series breaks down what a phase signal actually is at its core: a number that travels from 0 to 1, where each value represents a proportional position in a cycle. Using a Value knob to scrub through a step sequencer manually, the video makes the relationship between the phase position and step selection completely visual and concrete.
The key insight is that this 0-to-1 range is enforced by a modulo function. Whatever value feeds into the phase lookup, the system strips away the integer part and keeps only the decimal remainder, which means large numbers, messy math, and even negative values all wrap cleanly back into range. This is why phase-driven systems stay in sync even when the underlying signal is imprecise.