How do I play vibrato on ocarina?
Playing vibrato on the ocarina involves rhythmically varying your breath pressure. To get started, let's learn how to exhale at different rates without your ocarina:
- Open your lips as if to blow out a candle to create a bit of resistance. The smaller or larger the aperture, the more or less resistance you will experience. Next, take a deep inhalation from the diaphragm and exhale as rapidly as you can.
- Secondly, do the same thing but exhale more slowly.
- Practise both of these alternately until they become natural; you may find it helpful to put your hand on your belly.
To play vibrato, you vary your breath pressure slightly, cycling from low to high, then back to low, and so on.
For example, try adding vibrato while playing a long tone:
- Put on a metronome at about 40 to 60 BPM.
- Play vibrato pulses, placing the peak of your exhalation on the beat.
It should sound something like this:
You are starting out quite slowly here, but with practice, varying your breath pressure will feel natural, and you will be able to speed it up.
Vibrato practice tips
Notes in the middle of the range are a great place to start practising your vibrato, as they are relatively stable. Ocarinas are unusual in that the pitch of their high notes is much less sensitive to pressure changes than the low notes.
The pitch change should not be excessive; a fluctuation of 10 to 20 cents is fine. You can measure and visualise your vibrato using a pitch graph like Ocavis, provided on this website:
Focus on making your vibrato consistent, initially on a single note, then over the instrument's range as your skill improves. As noted, the low notes are more sensitive to pressure changes.
You may also be interested in how to apply vibrato in your music, which is discussed in articulation and ornamentation applied.
