How to play the ocarina by ear

Contrary to popular belief you do not have to be born with the ability to play by ear. It is like reading or speaking a foreign language: you may recognise some patterns, but won't have any idea what it means until you learn the words and grammar.

A melody is a series of notes of different pitches that together form larger structures called figures, phrases, and parts. Playing the ocarina by ear means learning to recognise these patterns, and how to reproduce them on your instrument.

Let's start with the absolute basics. When you hear a note it will have a pitch, and pitches can be either low pitched, or high pitched.

High pitches sound like this:

And low pitches sound like this:

Ocarinas sound higher pitches when more holes are open, or if you blow harder, and lower ones when more holes are covered or less air is used.

Higher, lower or the same?

When two notes are played one after another we can learn to hear how they relate. That is, is the second note higher, lower, or the same as the first?

This is how a note sounds when it is higher.

This is how a note sounds when the pitch is the same.

And, this is how a note sounds when the pitch is lower.

The skill of hearing the relationships between notes is called relative pitch, and it's easy to practice with the following tool.

Should you find this step challenging, learning to sing the notes helps, as discussed in Learning to identify melodic intervals by ear.

Differentiating pitches

So, now we know what it sounds like when a note is higher or lower than another, but how do we get from this, to playing a melody by ear? A great way to get started with anything is to simplify, so lets start using just 3 notes with a low, medium and high pitch.

You can hear them by clicking on the buttons below. Note that it is not important which notes they are right now, just listen to how they sound in relation to each other.

If you spend some time experimenting with these notes, playing them in various orders, you may notice a few things:

• Playing a sequence like 'low, medium, high', sounds different to 'high, medium, low'.
• A sequence like 'low, high', or 'high, low' also has a distinctive character.
• As does 'low, medium, low', vs 'low, high, low'.

If we learn to recognise these characteristic patterns by ear, we can translate them into the fingerings on an instrument, and perform the melody. But how do we do that?

First, you can memorise the sounds of the notes

If we can hold the sound of the individual pitches in short term memory, it is then possible to compare the sounds we are hearing with them, and know which notes were played:

• First, ask someone to play you one of the 3 pitches randomly, followed by the 3 options in sequence (shown below).
• Listen to the pitch of the first note, compare it with the following references, and say what you heard.

By repeating this exercise for a few mutinies, randomly varying the first note, we begin to learn what the options sound like and can connect them to their name.

Later in the same practice session, ask your assistant to play only the first random note, and you'll be able to identify it without the need to hear the reference notes.

But note that when beginning this exercise in a new practice session, a few cycles of the first stage will be needed to remind you what the options sound like. Most people do not have long-term absolute pitch memory.

Second, you can learn to play some of the possible patterns

As was observed, there are a limited number of possible ways to move between these notes in sequence, such as moving through them in ascending or descending order:

Moving in leap, directly from the low to high, or high to low:

Or moving up by one step, then back down again (or the reverse):

By choosing a few of these patterns and learning to perform them, we are simultaneously learning how that pattern sounds, and which notes are involved. Thus we can begin to understand music we are hearing by ear.

Its easy to practice as follows:

• Choose 2 or 3 patterns, and learn how to play them.
• Have someone play you the patterns at random, listen, and then perform the pattern.
• Once that becomes easy, introduce some more patterns.

Playing a simple melody by ear

Now, having started to develop an understanding of what we are hearing, we can play some simple melodies by ear.

Give it a try with the following tool. It generates short melodies, and you can play them by clicking on the note buttons.

The process is generally as follows:

Step 1: Listen to the notes

Start by listening to the 3 notes from lowest to highest, to remind you how the pitches sound.

Step 2: Listen to the melody

It can feel intuitive to try to play by ear by playing in real time over what you are hearing, but this really isn't a good idea. Doing that, you're only giving yourself a fraction of a second to hear the note!

This is why the second step is to listen through the whole melody a few times without playing. The goal is to hear and memorise the structure:

• Notice how the melody changes from note to note.
• For each note, does it sound like High, Medium or Low?

You may find it useful to draw the shape of the melody on paper at first. For example, if the melody was 'medium, low, high, low', you could draw it like this:

Step 3: Play

Play the notes, and listen. The tool or your assistant will tell you if it was correct. Note that the tool will also show you if you listen 3 times in a row.

Now lets try it on the ocarina!

As was demonstrated above, it is easiest to get started playing the ocarina by ear when you know the range of notes being used. Let's use 3 notes from the middle of the range, as they have more stable pitch.

The following tool generates random melodies for you to play by ear, and uses pitch detection to tell you when you got it right. It is set up to generate melodies using the notes shown above.

Random melodies are useful as they will include every possible note transition within the selection of notes.

Start out by playing the 3 notes shown in the fingering chart above on your ocarina so that you can hear how they sound. You may find it useful to use a tuner to make sure you are playing them in tune.

Then listen to the entire melody and hear how it changes from one note to the next, drawing its shape if it helps, then try playing the notes on your ocarina.

The tool will show you when you've played the correct notes, and shows how accurately you are playing with a horizontal line:

• If the line is at the bottom the note you are playing is lower than what you are hearing.
• If it is at the top, it is higher than the played note.
• If it is in the centre, you are playing the same note, and are in tune.

If you are struggling, try slowing down the tempo. Also note that process of elimination can be used. If a sequence ascends by 3 notes, and the melody only uses 3 notes, then you know it starts on the lowest note.

The main point with this tool is to practice playing a lot of melodies. As soon as you can play something, generate a new melody. And, As you gain experience, gradually increase the range a note at a time.

A game to practice finding notes, Match the pitch

Match the pitch is a simple game you can play to practice finding notes on your instrument.

• It plays you a note within the specified range.
• You find the note on your instrument as quickly as you can, pitch detection is used to know when you have played the correct note.
• The more notes you find in the allotted time, the higher your score.

The same game can be played in-person if you have a teacher, or friend who plays an instrument. Just ask them to play notes for you to find on your ocarina.

Playing rhythms by ear

You may be wandering why I have not yet discussed rhythms with regards to playing by ear, and the reason is that most people can copy a rhythm by ear without difficulty.

That being said, it is still important to practice rhythms to learn to play them accurately, and this can be easily done by playing or clapping over a recording of what you are learning.

By listening, you'll hear if your notes are early, late or in time, and can compensate as needed. In time you'll internalise the common rhythms, and naturally correct any mistakes.

The following tool demonstrates what it sounds like when a note is played early or late, the timing can be changed by dragging the slider.

Learning rhythms by ear has some advantages as you'll naturally learn the subtle details of human performances. Real human performances are generally not mathematically 'strict' in the sense that sheet music implies, notes may be early or late, or a little longer or shorter.

In case you find this more challenging, learning how to clap some of the common rhythm patterns will help useful. This is addressed in a few articles including Getting rhythm, and Reading rhythms in sheet music, the latter of which includes a large section on learning rhythms by ear.

Congratulations

By this point you should have played your first music by ear on the ocarina, so congratulations!

From here it is just a matter of practice. Keep working on simple melodies in a 3 note range until playing them by ear becomes effortless, and then start working up the difficulty:

• Start increasing the range of notes being used, introducing one new note and a time. Practice memorising how that note sounds in the context of the others using the 'memorise the sounds of the notes' exercise.
• Experiment with the note patterns that are possible within the new set of notes, play them and learn how they sound. The second article in this series, Using melodic patterns to play by ear, discusses this in more detail.
• As was observed, how two notes sound in sequence change depending on how far apart they are. This distance is called an interval, and if we learn to identify them, it also enhances our understanding. See Identifying melodic intervals by ear.
• Finally, playing real music by ear explores how to bring everything together, understanding the patterns of different scales and applying everything to real music.

These skills can take time to develop, simply because we don't use them in day to day life, but with practice almost anyone can develop them.

Now go play something by ear!