A slightly old recording of Columbina's Lulliby from Genshin Impact, played here on a Pure DAG.
My biggest gripes with this recording is the heavy in-breaths as well as one notable wrong note, however otherwise I am happy with this! And it sounds beautiful on this ocarina.
Open to suggestions for improvement!
The main things that I notice which could be improved about your performance are inconsistencies in the rhythm, and how articulations are being used.
I'd suggest that you try either playing over a metronome, or playing over the original recording. Make sure your notes start in time with where they should be as indicated by the metronome / track.
Rhythmic stalls often result from needing to think 'which fingers do I need to move to play these notes', and practising scale and interval exercises regularly helps a lot with that.
The second thing is that there is little phrasing audible, and all of your notes are being articulated in exactly the same way. If you listen to the original track, and especially pay attention to the spaces between the notes, what do you hear?
Some of the notes sound very separated 'staccato', while others are almost ran into each other with no separation besides the change of pitch. These variations are essential to making music sound musical, which is called 'phrasing' and 'musicality'.
You can also bring this variation into your ocarina playing by varying how long you stop the air with your tongue, or running notes together in a single breath (no tongued articulations).
This is why I dislike the practice of teaching articulation as 'just say tu / ta'. What is actually going on is that the tongue is being used as a valve to start and stop the flow of air.
The tongue can be in either a position where it is blocking the air from flowing, or it can be in a position that allows air to flow freely. You can let the tongue 'dwell' in the stopping position, which means that you can make the gap between notes as long as you want. Likewise: less dwell time, shorter gap.
Oof, I knew I had some challenges with rhythm, but I didn't know it was that intense! I'll have to spend more time with the song itself.
Quote:
This is why I dislike the practice of teaching articulation as 'just say tu / ta'. What is actually going on is that the tongue is being used as a valve to start and stop the flow of air.
The tongue can be in either a position where it is blocking the air from flowing, or it can be in a position that allows air to flow freely. You can let the tongue 'dwell' in the stopping position, which means that you can make the gap between notes as long as you want. Likewise: less dwell time, shorter gap
I also agree that it feels strange for articulations to only be taught in single syllables. Even playing with some people's interpretation of "double tonguing" I can almost hear clear differences between the vocal articulations, even through the notes being played.
On the bright side, I did find a couple of articulations present in the original audio that were not present in the sheet music I was working with, and I feel like that is bringing more to my music. I'll have to spend more time on my scales and rhythm and see where this gets me.
Quote:I also agree that it feels strange for articulations to only be taught in single syllables. Even playing with some people's interpretation of "double tonguing" I can almost hear clear differences between the vocal articulations, even through the notes being played.
Another problem with this is that the tongue positions used to produce vocal sounds, and the tongue positions that produce the best sounding articulations, are not the same. If you notice the tongue posture you get by saying 'tu', the rear of the tongue also raises, which isn't ideal because it creates extra turbulence in the airflow.
If you just experiment with tongue postures separate from vocal sound associations, you can find positions that sound better. This applies to both single and double tonguing.