Is the ocarina a good instrument for young children?

Ocarinas can be good instruments for young children because they are mechanically simple. However, this does not mean you can give a child an ocarina and expect them to master it or achieve much of anything without guidance.

There is a great deal more to playing the ocarina than the obvious factors like fingering. Wind instruments often look easier than they are because many playing techniques happen inside the body:

• The tongue is used to separate (articulate) notes.
• Breath control must be developed to play in tune and create expression.

Many other factors go into playing instruments, such as holding the instrument correctly, internalising fingerings, developing a sense of rhythm, training one's ear, learning to read music, and developing musicality.

None of these things is that hard to learn, but adequate guidance must be provided for them to be grasped.

Introducing the ocarina to children

To begin, the child's fingers must be large enough to cover the instrument's finger holes. If the holes are not correctly covered, it will be impossible to play the instrument in tune. A smaller, higher pitched ocarina may be needed.

From here, one can teach a child to play the ocarina by breaking the task down into skills that later come together:

• Introducing some simple rhythms by clapping or making it into a game of touching different body parts to a beat.
• Introducing how to hold the ocarina and demonstrating how opening more holes results in a higher pitch. Ask them to identify if a note has a high vs. low pitch by ear.
• Then one can start to show breath control, demonstrating how to blow hard and soft, how this affects the ocarina's pitch,
• One could then teach one or two fingerings. Have the child play these as a long tone over the teacher, show how two notes sound when the child plays perfectly in tune vs flat and sharp by varying blowing pressure.
• Then work up to playing some some simple tunes by ear and through physical demonstration. Introduce tonguing vs slurred articulation.

Providing in-person demonstrations of the instrument played well is essential because it enables the child to observe subconsciously how you interact with the instrument and how it is supposed to sound.

By introducing and developing skills separately, it's much easier for a child to grasp them when they are later combined. The page 'How to teach the ocarina to children' covers my thoughts in more detail.