Blues chromatic beyond third position

Is anyone playing around with - or at least contemplating - playing blues on chromatic in something other than third position?

The simplest way to do this is to just hold the slide in and play a semitone higher. On a C chromatic this gives you Eb instead of D. Technically theis is tenth position (Eb is ten positions from C around the circle of fifths). But if you press the slide in and never move it out, tenth plays just liek third. (Of course you can put the slide in play, and then everything is different from third).

The next simplest thing is to play in second position instead of third. That draw D minor chord with added 6th (B) becomes a G9th chord, but without a root note (the root of the G chord, the note G, is always a blow note). Paul Oscher did this on the live recording of Mudcat, the Muddy Waters set closer theme. You can play a lot of third position licks, but you have to resolve then differently.

Of course, by pressing in the slide and playing as if in second position, you get 9th position. Paul deLay used this on "Why Don't You Love Me?" Again, you can let the slide out and press it back in for some really simple slide ornaments, or you can start playing scales that use both slide-in and slide-out notes. This position is a favorite of jazz harmonica players because the scale is so flexible and offers so many slide ornaments.

All four of these positions, third, tenth, second and ninth, alow you to use the full draw chord, and to use all sorts of tongue techniques. Dave has been going into these in the lessons. I outline some of them in articles in the April and June 2009 issues of harmonicasessions.com, http://www.harmonicasessions.com/apr09/Yerxa.html and http://www.harmonicasessions.com/jun09/Yerxa.html

But what's all this stuff about slide ornaments? Does this have something to do with Stevie Wonder? I go into more detail about this in the October 2005 articles at harmonicsaessions.com: http://www.harmonicasessions.com/oct05/chromatic.html. At the end I show the C blues scale that forms the foundation for Stevie Wonder's style, togehter with the slide ornaments you can bring to that scale.

Of course, over the years people have begun to combine the two approaches, so that you can play the big-chord third position (or second or ninth or tenth) with slide ornaments a la Mr. S.W.. I go some of this in the August 2009 issue of harmonicasessions: http://www.harmonicasessions.com/aug09/Yerxa.html.