Congratulations Steve!

[WYKS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Great to hear from another harp theorist, Dick!  I think you're right; I've
got to shift to the modern pythogorean labeling convention for 4th and 5th
positon.  I don't like too, though: tradition beckons strongly on these
matters to me.  Oh well.
  You probably know Musselwhite lays this out in the
old "Harmonica According to Musselwhite" book; I'd figured out the cycle of
fifths logic from his ordering there.  His treatment of positions is
horrible, though, because he just gives the major scales in each position
(using x's for the notes you can't get):  he should have done this for the
minor scales and (most of all, given his genre) the blues scale.  Anyway,
I've got to get that Levy tape el pronto.

Regarding "Moondance."  I don't know the song, but your thoughts got me re-
thinking about the strengths of various positions for minor keys.  I don't
mind using the 3draw bent two half-steps to get the A (on a C-harp).  (I
call that a "double-bend"); I've tried to work at getting control over
each of those
3-draw bends, and getting decent tone at the same time.  But my half-baked
impression has been that 4th position allows you to play some minor songs
(especially on the upper register) that aren't really possible (except maybe
with overblows) on the others.  I've surmised this is because these songs
are a natural minor, with a flatted 6th as well as flatted 7th, or something
like this--but I've never worked this out precisely, and I may be wrong.
And a little paper sketching makes me now doubt this--both look
available in 4th and 3rd too.  I'll look at it more tonite.

    Last year I was looking for something that would use, in one tune, all
the half-steps available between 2blow and 4draw, so one could get down the
precise bending.  I found that the old "Alley Cat" works pretty well.  Ever
tried on a diatonic?