<\/p>\n
Subs are often the best<\/strong><\/span> musicians.\u00a0 They’re great ear players.<\/p>\n I’ve subbed a few times.\u00a0 One time I wore a suit instead of a tux and got The Ray (the stare) from the bandleader.\u00a0 Another time I iced my tendinitis during a break and almost missed the downbeat (the start of the next set).<\/p>\n I don’t do much subbing.\u00a0 I’m not the greatest ear player and my sight-reading skills are only so-so.<\/p>\n The worst player in the band should be the leader, who then hires people better than himself<\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [Subliminal message\u00a0 for non-readers: Jump to the video at the end of this post.]<\/span><\/p>\n Playing by ear . . .<\/strong><\/span> that’s the big mysterious matzo ball of music.\u00a0 Fact: You can get better at playing by ear. A little<\/em> better.\u00a0 First, close your eyes for a minute before practicing.\u00a0 Listen to the clock and your neighbor’s barking dog.\u00a0 Then play a couple notes, eyes closed, like C, D, and E, and imagine why they’re different.\u00a0 What is the distance between the notes?<\/p>\n You have no idea.<\/p>\n Follow up with a chromatic scale, C-C#-D-D#-E, and you’ll have an idea.\u00a0 The chromatic run sounds like swarming bees, \u00e0 la “Flight of the Bumblebee.”\u00a0 This chromatic run “looks” zig-zaggy, as if you’re walking up the fire-exit steps at a downtown hotel.\u00a0 C is the first floor, C# is the landing, and D is the second floor. You begin to feel the intervals (the leaps).<\/p>\n Don’t underestimate the eyes-closed part. \u00a0Pretend you have eye strain and need to rest your eyes.<\/p>\n If you’re a professional musician, try playing with your eyes closed on stage occasionally.\u00a0 It’ll clear the visual clutter.\u00a0 I spent 30 minutes at a concert trying to remember my kids’ preschool teacher’s name.\u00a0 She was in the audience.\u00a0 My kids are in their twenties.\u00a0 I should have had my eyes closed.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I encouraged a gentile<\/strong><\/span> Yiddishe Cup musician to attend KlezKamp, the klezmer convention, to learn klezmer conventions.\u00a0 When the KlezKamp registrar asked his Yiddish name, I interrupted, “Farbisener.<\/em>” (Bitter One.)<\/p>\n My musician wore his Farbisener ID badge for five days. \u00a0He could take a joke — barely.<\/p>\n I’ve had goys<\/em> in Yiddishe Cup since the beginning.\u00a0 That’s no surprise.\u00a0 Have you been to an Orthodox Jewish wedding in the Midwest? \u00a0The sole Jewish musician is often the singer, because he has to know Hebrew.\u00a0 The rest of the band might be jazzers, many of whom are cool dudes with cigs, fraying tuxes, and war stories about backing up Jerry Lewis and Tom Jones.\u00a0 Divide everything they say in half.\u00a0\u00a0 But they can play — anything from Charlie Parker to Madonna.<\/p>\n Some subs, on the <\/strong><\/span>other hand, are not<\/em> old jazzers; they are young music school grads who don’t smoke, don’t dress like shlubs<\/em>, and know all the tunes — and are also full of BS.\u00a0 If a young sub says he just made $500, that means he drove to New York, slept on a couch, and didn’t calculate his travel expenses.\u00a0 He has never heard of depreciation.<\/p>\n I hired a sub from a small town near Canton, Ohio.\u00a0 (Yes, Canton is small, but this guy’s ville<\/em> was very<\/em> small.)\u00a0 He played terrific guitar and sang in Italian, Spanish and English. He had grown up in three countries. \u00a0He claimed he did 260 gigs a year — a lot.\u00a0 Most were quality gigs, he said, although some were “wallpaper” (background music), and some outright sucked: “I had a gig playing dinner parties for the Hoover vacuum family.”<\/p>\n Subs need quips like that to regale the band at breaks.\u00a0 The regulars demand it; they are sick of each other’s jokes and stories.<\/p>\n The toughest job in music — subbing.<\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n This vid clip is from<\/strong> the “Driving Mr. Klezmer” show.\u00a0 Includes klezmer and Mickey Katz’s “16 Tons,” followed by Alan Douglass, on keyboards, reciting the first verse of Genesis in Hebrew.\u00a0 Not bad for a gentile.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n