The ocarina's breath curve

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The breath curve describes how your blowing pressure must change over an ocarina's range to produce a clean tone and play in tune.

Breath curves exist because opening finger holes allows the air in the chamber to escape. When most of the holes are closed, little air is required, and as you play higher notes you have to blow progressively harder. If you were to measure these pressures and make a graph, it would look something like this:

A graph visualising the breath curve of a well tuned single chamber ocarina. Pressure increases smoothly from the low note to the high note

It's pretty easy to observe the breath curve because the pitch changes along with pressure:

Finger a low note, and adjust your blowing pressure with a chromatic tuner until you are in tune.
Finger a high note, repeat the same, and observe the pressure difference between the notes.

Every ocarina's breath curve is different, with some requiring only a small pressure change, others ramping up hugely towards the high notes. You can also quantify it, as discussed in Measuring an ocarina's breath curve.

It is really valuable to try playing a range of ocarinas from different makers and observe how the unique breath curve alters the instrument's tone and other playing characteristics.

How an ocarina's pitch responds to pressure changes over its range. The low notes are much more sensitive to pressure changes, so to create the same change in pitch on the high notes requires a much larger change in blowing pressure

The natural breath curve is approximately exponential—as you play higher notes, a larger pressure change is required from one note to the next—but the exact shape depends on many factors, including:

Chamber volume in relation to the sounded pitch.
The size of the sound hole.
The distance between the windway exit and labium.
The number of finger holes.
How restricted the windway is.
How the maker tuned the ocarina.

Ocarinas with steeper or shallower breath curves have different pros and cons for a player, such as steeper breath curves resulting in a larger volume dynamic between the high and low notes. See Ocarina playing characteristics and timbre.

Breath curves in multichamber ocarinas

The breath curves of multichamber ocarinas share the same characteristics and variation as those of single chambered ocarinas. They can be tuned with a shallower pressure curve, or alternately a steeper one. Just note that the breath curve of each chamber is independent.

The break between the highest note of one chamber and the lowest of the next one is called the chamber break. Multichambered ocarinas are typically tuned so that the low end of the higher chamber starts at a similar pressure to the high end of the first.

Occasionally, there will be a pressure drop between chambers, which usually exists to allow the playing of harmonies between chambers.

A graph showing the typical breath curve of a multichamber ocarina. Pressure increases gradually towards the high notes of the first chamber with a slight exponential curve, and the second chamber continues from a similar pressure, increasing more linearly and slowly