Learning the ocarina's fingerings
When you look at the fingering chart for your ocarina you may find it overwhelming. There are so many fingerings! How are you supposed to remember all of them?
The challenge here is short-term memory. Roughly speaking, people can remember about two to eight pieces of new information at a time. Thus, the whole of a fingering chart, with the state of all ten fingers for every note on the instrument, feels rather overwhelming.
It can be brought within your capacity by breaking the task down:
- Split the fingerings into small groups, such as groups of three notes.
- Practice each group in isolation, fingering the notes and saying their names.
Practising a small group in this way will move it into your long-term memory, which is practically unlimited in capacity. Once they enter long-term memory, the groups can be combined into complete scales.
We will be learning the fingerings assuming an alto C ocarina. The same principles apply if your ocarina is in a different key, but the sounded pitch will be different. You can find the sounded notes in your ocarina's fingering chart.
These exercises have been based on groups of three notes, but, depending on your short-term memory capacity, smaller or larger groups may be easier for you. Feel free to adjust as needed.
C, D, and E
Start by holding the ocarina in front of you with your elbows bent, letting you clearly see what your fingers are doing. Don't blow the instrument at this stage.
The fingerings for the notes C, D, and E are shown below. In these diagrams, black means that the hole is closed, and white means that it is open.
Take a look at the fingerings for these notes and perform each one on your ocarina individually, noticing which holes are open vs. closed.
Then, once you're familiar with the finger positions, perform them in sequence, starting from C, ascending to E, and then descend back down to C. As you do so, also say the name of the respective note aloud so that you start to associate the fingering and name.
- Finger and say C
- Finger and say D
- Finger and say E
- Finger and say D
Repeat this for a few minutes, and pretty quickly you'll be able to do it without thinking. You may find using a metronome at a slow tempo helps you pace yourself.
If you have never played a wind instrument before, you may find that moving your fingers like this is challenging. This is normal.
Start with slow practice and deliberately think about each finger movement. Do this for a few days, and things will feel more natural because sleep consolidates the things you've been practising.
Playing the notes
Once you've got the hang of fingering the notes and saying their names, have a go at playing them. Ensure that your fingers are fully covering the finger holes, and that you're using the correct blowing pressure to sound the note in tune.
Begin with your fingers on the holes and notice that you can feel the edge of the finger hole underneath the pad of your finger. It should definitely be the pads of your finger and not the fingertip; otherwise you will not be able to cover the holes properly. When you feel the holes, try moving the finger deliberately off to the side of a hole, and notice how this feels.
Finger each note one at a time, and blow each one as a long tone, starting and ending it with the tongue. Raise or lower your breath pressure using a chromatic tuner or drone until the note sounds in tune.
Remember the pressures needed, and then play through the short sequence C, D, E, D, C, ascending and descending. Raise your pressure as you play up the scale, and lower it as you come back down.
You may find that when you lower a finger you miss the hole, which will also result in the ocarina sounding out of tune. If that happens, practice raising and lowering that finger by itself, aiming to land it over the centre of the hole.
F, G, and A
Once you are happy with the first three notes, work on F, G, and A. Use the same method described previously, moving up and down through the fingerings and saying their names.
Do not lift your left pinky!
Notice that A is played by lifting the left ring finger and not the left pinky. The pinky finger stays down to support the instrument. If you play A with the pinky, the note will sound sharp.
Lifting the ring finger by itself may feel awkward at first, and it can feel like the pinky or middle finger also want to lift along with it. This is normal.
You may find it helps to raise and lower this finger by gripping it with your other hand, to get used to how it feels. Another exercise is to hover your hands an inch above a table, and then try to lower each finger to the table without moving any other fingers.
It will get easier after a day or two.
Stabilising the ocarina on higher notes
As you play higher notes, you might notice that the ocarina feels less stable. We solve this problem by placing one of our fingers on the ocarina besides a finger hole.
When you play notes higher than G, I'd recommend placing your right pinky finger to the right of the finger hole, as shown below. This is also shown in the previous video.
Notice that while a finger is supporting the ocarina, it is more difficult to close that finger's hole. With the pinky, that can be addressed by sliding the finger from side to side.
This challenge is why it matters which fingers you use to support the ocarina. In general, one should minimise the number of fingers supporting the instrument on higher notes.
A, B, and high C
Work on A, B, and high C using the same method. These are straightforward.
High D, E, and F
The highest three notes require a bit more technique. Up to this point, the right thumb has been proving the instrument's main support. How can you open the right thumb hole without dropping the instrument?
The technique used to play these notes is called the 3 point grip. With this technique, the ocarina will be balanced between your left index finger, right pinky and the edge of the thumb.
Here's how you do the 3 point grip:
- When you move from C to D, place your left index finger vertically on the cappello, to the left of the finger hole. The left thumb just lifts off the hole and hangs in the air below the ocarina.
- To move from D to E, rotate your right wrist and roll the right thumb off its hole.
- And finally, the pinky just lifts off to play the high F.
You can read more about this technique, as well as some common mistakes, in the article 'How to hold an ocarina on the high notes'.
Play C, D, E, F, E, D slowly and repeatedly until you get used to it. The fingerings are demonstrated in the video above.
As you practice this, you may intuitively support the instrument with other fingers, such as by placing the left thumb next to its hole. Doing so is generally a bad idea, as having weight resting on that finger locks the finger away from its hole, making it harder to close the hole again.
Finally, note that what's shown here is for an ocarina using Asian fingering; the technique is the same for ocarinas using Italian fingering, but high E and F are reversed. You would first lift the left pinky, then roll the thumb off last.
Subholes notes
Many ocarinas have one or more 'subholes'. These are played by sliding the respective fingers forwards to cover two holes at once, and allow you to play lower notes.
These notes can be practised as discussed, starting on C and going down then back up repeatedly. Just note that they tend to require a considerable drop in blowing pressure to sound in tune.
Bringing everything together
Once you can comfortably play each of the groups we've introduced separately, try to bring them together. Start out with two adjacent groups: play 'CDE' and combine it with 'FGA', playing from low C up to A, then back down.
Practice that until it gets easy, then introduce another group. Before long, you'll be playing the entire scale.
Learning the accidentals
Once you can play your ocarina's native major scale, you may also want to start learning the accidentals. Learning these can be approached in a few ways:
- Learn to play some scales and music that make use of the notes, such as F, G or D major. Practice the small part of the scale that differs by itself, then merge it in, until you can play the entire scale.
- A second approach is to go through each note in the neutral major scale (C major on a C ocarina), and learn the sharp and flat notes in relation. For instance, begin on low D, then finger D flat, then D sharp. Then continue for the other notes.
- Finally, you can learn to play the entire chromatic scale, starting on C, and moving through C sharp, D, D sharp and so on.
Using any of these approaches, I'd recommend beginning by just fingering the notes and saying their names, as explained previously, before learning the breath pressure needed to play them.
Some common fingerings for these notes are shown below. Do note, however, that the fingerings for accidental notes depend on chamber acoustics and vary between ocarinas. It is best to learn the fingerings from a fingering chart for your specific ocarina.
Closing notes
You've learned how to approach memorising your ocarina's fingerings, and should have an idea which fingering corresponds to which note name. You may find that you still have to think about exactly which fingers to move when changing from one note to another.
How to practice effectively moving from one note to another will be addressed in How to never think about your fingers again while playing ocarina, but a good place to begin is a simple game you can play with someone else:
- Your friend names notes randomly.
- You have to finger the named note as fast as possible.
Start with a small range, and gradually expand as it gets easier.
