I have friends who are top notch musicians. A not-comprehensive list would include Gary Negbaur (garynegbaur.com), Ashley Bathgate (ashleybathgate.com) and Frank Olson (frankolson.com).
I, on the other hand, have never been known for my musical abilities. In high school, after earning my acting stripes in a drama at Stagedoor Manor, the performing arts camp in the Catskills, I asked to be cast in a musical. I was given the role of Doc in West Side Story, who sang all of five bars of music, with the rest of the cast, from behind the set. During grade school, I took music lessons for several years to learn how to play the rubber pad. Technically, these were drum lessons, but I had a drum teacher who thought I would never be ready for a real drum. I took saxophone lessons for a year in high school and during my freshman year at Stanford. I liked playing the sax, but it never stuck.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown arrived, and people started expressing support for essential workers by clapping at 7:00 PM each night for exactly five minutes. Looking around my apartment, I found a wooden musical instrument designed to be struck with a stick, found the stick, and joined in each night from my balcony. After a while, I realized that I wasn’t making enough noise. A guy in the building across the way was setting the standard by playing a slide trombone. (Whether you like Commander William Riker of Star Trek: TNG, or not, both rational and emotional people have to agree that the slide trombone is a super-cool instrument.)
To step up my 7:00 PM Clapping game, I looked through Sam Ash’s website and eBay to find the least expensive horn I could find. That turned out to be the mini hunting horn. When the horn was delivered, I had no idea how to play it. The mouthpiece on this horn is like a trumpet, and not at all like a sax.
After searching the internet, I finally found this page: https://www.foxhuntinglife.com/foxhunting-horse-a-hound/norman-fine/2323-how-to-blow-the-fox-hunting-horn
This paragraph, probably printed in the 1940s, helped me get some sound out of the horn – still not sure what it really means in a technical sense, but it helped nonetheless (Sarah, my 11 year old daughter, figured it out more quickly than I did):
“In The Hunting Horn: What to Blow and How to Blow It—an undated, pocket-sized, twenty-seven-page booklet, first published probably in the 1940s—author L.C.R. Cameron says, “The lips of the performer should be hard, and the front teeth in good order. Hold the tube in the right hand, the bell slightly depressed, and incline it so that the wind does not blow directly into the tube. Almost close the lips, pressing them back against the teeth. Place the mouthpiece firmly against the centre of the almost closed lips and half blow, half spit into the mouthpiece, when a clear note should be produced. It is not necessary to puff out the cheeks, nor to discharge a lot of saliva into the Horn. Once it is found that the note can be obtained it is merely a question of practise to prolong or shorten it, so as to produce the various calls.””
After a month or two of practice five minutes a day, I obtained a reasonable proficiency in the mini hunting horn. Which, of course, meant that I now needed a full sized hunting horn. I need to find an instruction text to learn the traditional hunting horn calls. Maybe also learn how to blow the horn with one hand, while riding a horse. I have, though, been experimenting with contemporary hunting horn technique, which is a fancy way of saying I have been making it up as I go along. I originally thought the hunting horn could only produce one note, but this turns out to be incorrect.
What, you may be asking, does any of this have to do with breakfast or meeting people? Mostly nothing, except that if you are mildly amused before meeting someone new, you are more likely to smile, and if you smile, you are more likely to turn that new person into a friend. I don’t claim to be at the Bang on a Can level, but I am confident you will be mildly amused after watching this video. And the view of Lake Cayuga is beautiful.