Want to play well? Stop using ocarina tabs!
Ocarina tabs can be a great way to get started with playing music, and if they have helped you to get started with the ocarina or music in general, that's awesome. Playing music is a lot of fun and can lead to some great social experiences. However, ocarina tabs also have limitations that may hinder your music journey. Here are a few examples:
Ocarina tabs look simple because they omit information. They don't tell you about the rhythm, phrasing or note emphasis of a melody, leaving you to work them out by ear or from memory. This often leads to mistakes, which can go unnoticed for months or years without the guidance of a teacher.
Secondly, ocarina tabs are verbose. Showing the fingering for every note at a legible size takes up a considerable amount of space. Consequently, tabs can only represent simple music. While using them can work at first, it may also be favourable to explore more advanced musical ideas.
On this same train of thought, ocarina tabs will limit your repertoire. Only a tiny portion of the world's music will ever be transcribed into ocarina tabs.
At some point, you'll want to play something that does not exist in tab form. In such cases, you have a few options to consider. While you may seek assistance through social media or forums, learning to read sheet music or training your ear would make you more independent.
Also, the nature of tabs often leads to false assumptions, such as "if I am using the right fingering, I am playing the correct note". However, this assumption is misleading, as the ocarina's pitch changes with how hard you are blowing.
Finally, while tabs can serve as a helpful tool for playing simple melodies, they do not capture the intricate mechanics of music. By gaining a deeper understanding of these concepts, you can shape your own expression and enrich your experience with the instrument.
Moving beyond ocarina tabs
To move beyond ocarina tabs, I advise doing three things:
These tasks are easier to accomplish than you might think, and the list above links to dedicated pages on each of these topics, the basics of which are summarised below.
Be aware that if you've been using tabs for any amount of time, they will feel natural to you, while approaching something new may feel more stressful. This is normal, and things quickly get easier.
Learning your ocarina's fingerings
One of the issues with ocarina tabs is that they encourage you to think about finger positions consciously, which can prevent you from paying attention to the music you are playing.
It is straightforward to train your subconscious mind to do the fingerings for you. With this ability in place, playing the notes can be as easy as walking while having a conversation: you don't have to think about every joint movement you need to make.
Each fingering on your instrument represents a different note, and these notes all have names. Learning the fingerings is just a matter of breaking your fingering chart down into groups of three or four fingerings and looping through them while saying their names.
See 'Learning the ocarina's fingerings'.
Learning to read sheet music
Learning to read sheet music is easier than you might think. Sheet music is essentially a graph where:
- Vertical position represents different notes on your instrument,
- and symbols of different shapes represent how long each note will be played before you move to the next one.
Notes are read left to right, and each vertical position represents a different fingering on your instrument. For example, the following shows the note G, and how you would finger that note on an alto C ocarina.
Learning to read sheet music is just a matter of:
- Associating the shapes of notes to the rhythm they represent.
- Associating positions to fingerings and blowing pressures on the ocarina.
Note that the order in which you learn these matters, and I suggest learning to read rhythms before learning to read pitches. A melody is a rhythm with a series of pitches played to it.
The basics of learning to read sheet music are discussed on the page The basics of playing the ocarina with sheet music.
Learning the basics of reading sheet music is hugely liberating, as it is so widely used. It is almost certain that you will be able to find the music you want to play.
Learning how to play by ear
Contrary to common belief, the ability to play music by ear is not something you must be born with. It is a skill that can be developed with practice.
Like any skill, it must be developed starting from the basics:
- You'd want to start with a minimal range of notes.
- Get a friend to play a simple melody to you using those notes.
- Try to copy it yourself.
As you improve, you can start increasing the range of notes used and playing longer, more complex melodies. How to develop this skill is covered in the article The basics of playing the ocarina by ear.
Playing by ear is a valuable skill to develop, as there are details in human performances that sheet music cannot capture, such as subtle changes in rhythm and pitch that bring a performance to life.
Also, you may find it easier to learn melodies by ear instead of reading sheet music; that's fine. Different people will find one approach easier than the other. Both skills are helpful, so I'd suggest trying both methods and see which one feels most natural for you.
