This isn't a direct response to your points, but thank you for this! I'm a self-taught bassist, and I come from a very musical family, but I have no theory trai

This isn't a direct response to your points, but thank you for this! I'm a self-taught bassist, and I come from a very musical family, but I have no theory training at all. I love the form you've given to the things that I've come to just kind of intuit over the years of playing. One of my favorite things to do on the bass is to play around with that "region of probability" - to jump the beat, or to wait until the last possible moment to resolve something before moving on with the riff. It's fun. It makes the music sound unpredictable-yet-familiar, alive, and exciting. When my drummer and I start playing around with this, really fun things start happening. I've never really known how to express it before, but this gives me a wonderful way to conceptualize it. Thank you!