Learning to play the ocarina at high tempo

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Practising playing the ocarina at a high tempo is straightforward in principle. You start at a relatively low tempo and gradually work up the speed using a metronome:

Begin at a speed that lets you play the tune start to finish without serious errors.
Once you have found this tempo, bump up the speed 5 to 10 beats per minute. Play through the tune a few times. If you don't feel any tension, increase the speed slightly.
You'll reach a point where you can still hit the notes but have a niggling feeling that you should back off. Once you find this point, stick with it. If you play repetitions for a few minutes, the tension will begin to dissipate.
After you get comfortable playing at this tempo, you'll find that you can speed it up a little more, and so on. Stick with it, and your tempo will slowly increase.

The changes will be pronounced the following day after sleeping, and by practising this over multiple days, weeks, and months, you build it into muscle memory. Playing at a higher tempo becomes natural.

Using a metronome is critical, as feeling small tempo changes intuitively can be challenging. It's easy to jump from a tempo you can manage to something well beyond your current ability.

You may find that you can play some parts of your tune faster than others without making mistakes. It may help to isolate the parts where you are tripping up and practise them in isolation, initially at a lower tempo.

Always aim to move your fingers and change your breath pressure as fast as possible when moving between notes. Slow finger movement or change in pressure can create an unwanted pitch slide, which can make your playing sound muddy at high tempos.

It is also worth mentioning that instrument design, tuning, and poor player technique can make playing at high tempo needlessly demanding. Addressing the following points will help.

Technical issues

Minimise your finger movements

Minimising your finger movements will help you to play at a high tempo. The further you move your fingers away, the faster they need to move to keep up with the tempo of the music. At some point, it will hold you back.

There is a point, around two centimetres above a hole, where the finger no longer changes the instrument's pitch, and it is good practice to lift your fingers no higher than this. See Controlling your finger movements.

Excessive finger movement Excessive, uncontrolled finger movement on the ocarina. The fingers are a long way from the hole, and would need to move a large distance to close it again. This is poor technique and makes playing quickly needlessly difficult

Excessive, uncontrolled finger movement on the ocarina. The fingers are a long way from the hole, and would need to move a large distance to close it again. This is poor technique and makes playing quickly needlessly difficult

Controlled finger movement A controlled finger movement on the ocarina, the finger is kept close to the hole, so that it only needs to move a small distance to close it again

A controlled finger movement on the ocarina, the finger is kept close to the hole, so that it only needs to move a small distance to close it again

Play an ocarina with a minimal breath curve

Just as it is easier to move a finger over a small distance than a larger one, it is easier to change your pressure by a small amount. Thus, an ocarina with a flatter breath curve will be easier to play at a high tempo.

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

Play a 10-hole or a multichamber

As more holes are added to an ocarina, more air is required to maintain sound production. This change is not linear, and adding a subhole or two greatly increases the pressure needed to sound the high notes.

The breath curve of a 10 hole vs a 12 hole ocarina. Blowing pressure must increase towards the high notes, but the total pressure required to sound the high notes will tend to be lower in an ocarina having fewer finger holes

10 and 11-hole ocarinas may be tuned with a flatter breath curve over their sounding range. Multichambers also sidestep this problem, as each chamber produces a smaller part of the total range, even with subholes.

Issues caused by tonguing

As the tempo increases, relying solely on single tonguing can hold you back. It can also sound choppy and may cause intonation issues.

One option is to just not tongue fast passages, only tonguing the notes needed to maintain the phrasing of the music
Use double tonguing, a technique where you use multiple parts of the tongue to create articulation.
Another option is to use fingered articulations. They work by flicking a finger to sound an extremely brief higher or lower pitch. They respond better in high tempo music as the instrument does not have to stop and start sounding.

Try to keep your tongue reasonably far from the roof of your mouth. If it is too close, it may restrict the airflow enough to cause intonation issues.

Closing notes

Learning to play the ocarina at high tempos isn't that difficult, objectively; it just takes a lot of time and practice, slowly building up your skill. With patience and good practice, you'll eventually get there.