Pure Ocarinas Home Page

Ocavis, online pitch graph and intonation visualiser

A pitch graph or intonation visualiser is like a chromatic tuner, but enables you to clearly see how your pitch changes over time. The notes of the chromatic scale are displayed as horizontal lines, and the history of notes you've played are plotted over the top.

When you play a note on your ocarina in tune, the drawn line will match with the corresponding note line. If you are sharp or flat it will fall between two lines.

This page can be accessed at the following URL in any web browser:

https://pureocarinas.com/intonation-pitch-graph

How to use a pitch graph in your ocarina practice

A pitch graph tuner can be used for a number of things:

  • You can play long tones, and visualise how stable your blowing pressure is between the start, body, and end of the note.
  • You can visualise the consistency of your vibrato
  • If you play music normally, you will clearly see if any of your notes are consistently flat or sharp. For example if you have a piece of music that leaps repeatedly to a lower or higher note, you may see that the pitch is flatter or sharper than it should be.
  • You can identify if the pressure curve you are using is correct for your instrument (see below).
  • You can identify badly tuned ocarinas.

Matching your breath curve to your ocarina

A pitch graph is very useful for checking that the breath curve you are using is correct for your ocarina. Simply play a scale slowly from the lowest to the highest note, and look at how the notes fall on the graph.

You should see something like the following, where the lines drawn from your playing have the same spacing as the lines in the background.

If you don't increase your pressure enough between notes, the distance between the pitches of your notes shown in the graph will be closer together than the background lines.

If you increase your pressure too much between notes, your pitches will be further apart than the background lines.

Irregular breath curves

You may find that the pitches shown by Ocavis are correct for most of the range, but that the high notes of single chambered ocarinas are flat. This may be as your ocarina requires a non-linier pressure curve. Many 12 hole ocarinas for example require an exponential pressure spike on the highest 3 notes for them to play in tune.

Badly tuned ocarinas

If you play a simple scale like this and your pitches appear random, either you are changing your blowing pressure irregularly, or the ocarina you have is badly tuned.

Other tools

You may also find these tools useful: