Yep, I can see that now, CobaltDream and BagginsBill... no short-cuts. Those pages I referred to earlier will be the result of my little lab. Not an authorative study by any means... a bit higglety-pigglety, with an obvious primary objective to understanding that first shader you gave away with VSS, which is a work of art, the more I study it, and that's all I've been doing... obsessing about it, really. I'm on holidays from my job as a nurse, so I can devote hours and hours of study, which is exactly what I'm doing. Of course, ya gotta do a bit of the family thing, but for the most part I'm a bit of a recluse, so I can indlge myself in time studying this.

Bill, the UR and the BUFF() and f(0)=0 / f(1)=1 principles make perfect sense - theoretically. I'm thick, so I have to see how those principles apply to real-life situations. Hence my little test lab. I'm actually using a node (say, spots) which behaviour I've sorta got sorted out (still a bit more playing to do there!) and then connecting another spots node with a math_function Add. Render. Change one value in the Add node. Render... and so forth. Do the same for subtract. look at the graph for Add and follow it out in the increments whoever wrote that into to that page (was that you as well??) suggested.

Sound like a reasonable approach?

It took obsessing about it for me to get my head around VB... now, it's intuitive. This challenge is a bit different: no manuals. Gotta make my own.

Oh, BTW, may I mention your name on those pages? I want to give credit where it's due. If you have an issue with that, however, I won't.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks