Playing blues chromatic in non-chordal positions

As blues harmonica players, we like to play in positions that give us nice, fat chords to exert all our tongue-blocking skills and give us a nice cushion - no bad discordant notes if we play the neighboring holes to the important blues notes.

This is probably why as players we favor second, third, and first positions on diatonic, in roughly that order – all three positions have full "home" chords (the I chord) that run through much of the harp.

Blues chromatic favors third position, as we get that nice fat Dm6 (D minor 6) draw chord running the entire range of the C chromatic. No wrong-sounding notes, and no need to use the slide unless want to get fancy.

But what if you decide to get a bit more adventurous and start venturing into single-note land? Can you still sound like you're playing blues, as opposed to jazz or something that just sounds like a hokey attempt to force blues notes out of something inherently un-bluesy - blues glockenspiel, anyone?

Over the next few weeks I'm going to start posting some broad hints on how to start exploring blues in E on a chromatic.

Why E?

For one thing it's a popular blues key.

For another, with a few pushes of the slide button, it becomes pretty easy to avoid bad notes and make some nice, bluesy sounds come out.

Also, you can still do some split intervals in E, so you're not totally isolated in a single-note desert.