Pitch reference drone for ocarina practice

A drone tool plays a long tone of a single pitch you select. It can be used for many things in ocarina practice, some of which are described below.

If you want to open this page directly, it can be accessed at the following URL in any web browser:

https://pureocarinas.com/drone

How to use a drone for ocarina practice

An easy way to begin utilising a drone is to play notes in unison with it. To do so, choose a note on the ocarina, then set the tool above to produce the same note. When you click 'start', the drone will play the chosen tone at a constant pitch. You can hear when you're playing in tune like this:

• If the note that you're playing is perfectly in tune with the drone, the two sounds merge, sounding like a single sound.
• You'll hear a warbling sound when your pitch is higher or lower than the pitch of the drone. The speed of this warble increases the more out of tune you are.
• By listening to this sound, you can learn to adjust your blowing pressure up or down as needed to correct your pitch.

The warbling effect produced by two slightly differing tones can be observed with the tool below. Notice how the sound changes when you drag the pitch slider left or right:

It is also possible to use the drone as a fixed reference for playing melodies. You set the drone to match the key of the music you're playing and observe how different notes sound in relation to it. See the article Playing the ocarina in tune for further guidance.

Other tools

You may also find these tools useful:

• Dynamic drone.
• Chromatic tuner.
• Pitch graph (intonation visualiser).