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In your progress as composers, have you had a recent epiphany that has helped you bump your writing up a notch? Big or small, what was it? For me lately, it is 6/3 chords. That is, chords with the 3rd of the chord in the bass. In common practice it's used to give a bass line a powerful melodic component. It is used in V-I or I-IV progressions where the third resolves up a half step. It's considered an unstable chord, and that's why it's use is temporary and very circumscribed. I don't know why I haven't used them before, they are very useful! They add a certain ambiguity and freedom to your voice leading. Conversely, it doesn't have to be a major third. It can also be a minor third, which can be used as a stationary root. For example, the 6/3 chord Eb-G-C (Cm) can be interpreted as a Eb6 chord (I) going to Bb7 (V). Also many other possibilities with epiphanies, they don't have to be harmonic.

Yes, and if you extrapolate this into eliminating other notes as well, any chord could be labeled many different ways. You have to admire vibraphone players. They have only four notes maximum to play at one time, but they depend on having a bass player play the other ones.

I learned that in jazz the root of the chord doesn't actually have to be present and things made a lot more sense to me.

Your analogies are spot on, and good for you on your progress! It's funny the things we can do because other people haven't yet told us that we can't. Or the things we don't do because we didn't know we could. Why does Stevie Wonder not use his thumbs when he plays piano? Check it out. I guess I was a first inversion bigot. I was blind but now I see. It's formalized now in a way that won't leave me.

I was realizing the other day that my ability to think about musical concepts without having a pencil and paper available to write the notes out on a set of staves or a piano to look at and be visualizing the keys is improving. Some of it is starting to sink in to my brain, so I can think about it without the visual cue as a crutch. I can keep it straight in my head a little more easily. It's like being able to count without using your fingers for the first time, or read silently without having to move your lips as you sound out words. Slowly but surely... How the heck have you managed to write so much music without using 1st inversions?! That's a masterwork of its own to have successfully avoided them for so long! You've been an elite runner with only one shoe on! :D