Playing the ocarina in tune - ocarina intonation

Intonation on the ocarina is like salt in cooking, unless you get it right the food won't taste very good. Likewise, unless your intonation is correct, your music won't sound very good.

As was discussed in previous parts of this book, the pitch of an ocarina will change a great deal depending on how hard you are blowing. Playing the ocarina in tune is thus entirely in your hands as the player.

It is often advised that new ocarina players make use of a chromatic tuner for this reason, a tool that visualises the pitch accuracy of the note that you are playing. Tuners are a fantastic tool for sure, but I think that a better idea is to learn to hear your intonation, a tuner after all can not help you play in tune with other musicians.

Unfortunately, there is a tremendous amount of misinformation around the ability to hear intonation, with many assuming that it 'is something you must be born with'. This is not true.

There are actually two different kinds of pitch perception:

• Relative pitch, the ability to hear the tuning of one note in relation to another note.
• Absolute pitch, also called 'perfect pitch', is the ability to name a note without other context, similar to how you can perceive a colour as 'red' or 'blue'.

Of these, relative pitch is the most important in the playing of musical instruments. Relative pitch is a learned skill, and something that the vast majority of people can develop with practice.

By comparison, absolute pitch is very rare. Evidence suggests that it is developed in some people who receive musical training at a very young age. Regardless, it is not required to play an instrument well.

In this article you'll develop relative pitch, and how it can be used to hear if you are playing your ocarina in tune.

How to hear intonation on the ocarina

A good place to get started with hearing intonation on the ocarina is to observe the relationship between two pitches played at the same time. If one pitch is varied higher, lower, or kept the same, you can observe what this sounds like.

The following tool plays two pitches, one fixed, and one you can change with a slider; try dragging the 'pitch' slider right or left and observe how the sound changes.

What do you hear? You may notice that:

• Whenever the pitch is raised or lowered, there is a rhythmic warble.
• The speed of this will increase as you go further from the desired pitch and will slow down as you get closer to being in tune.
• When your pitch and the drone's pitch match perfectly, the warble goes away and the drone almost vanishes.

You can also experience this on the ocarina by playing against a drone, a tool that plays a continuous note. For your convenience, I've provided one below.

The idea is to set the drone to play a note, and then listen to it while you are playing the same note on your ocarina as a long tone.

The tool above uses scientific octave numbers, and here are how they relate to some common ocarinas:

• A bass C ocarina's low C is C4.
• An alto C ocarina's low C is C5.
• An alto C ocarina's high C is C6.

You may choose to set the drone to 'C5' (the low C on an alto C ocarina) and if you play the same note on your ocarina over it, adjusting your pressure as you need until the pitch of your note matches the drone, and any wobble goes away.

The ocarina is not an instrument one can be timid with; if you drop breath to play quieter you'll go out of tune.

I would recommend doing this exercise with each of the notes on your ocarina, the fingerings for a few of which are shown below.

• Set the pitch of the drone to the note you're about to play.
• Start the note cleanly using the tongue.
• Hold it for as long as you can without straining.
• Then stop it cleanly when you're about to run out of breath.

Focus on listening to any warble between you and the drone, and raise or lower your breath to get rid of it. Repeat this 10 to 20 times for each note, aiming to play the note in tune right from the start. Remember that using diaphramatic breathing makes controlling your breath much easier. See 'Blowing an ocarina correctly'.

You may find it useful to also have a chromatic tuner outside of your field of view, and glance at it to check you're hearing what you think you are.

Why do my high notes screech or sound airy?

If you find that it's impossible to play your ocarina's high notes in tune there's a good chance it's caused by temperature. The notes in music are tuned in relation to a pitch standard called 'concert pitch', commonly A440.

Ocarinas are affected by temperature, and are tuned to play at concert pitch at a certain temperature such as 20C.

• If the high notes screech before getting to the correct pitch, it is probable that you are playing in an environment colder than the ocarina was tuned for.
• Likewise if your high notes sound airy, you may be playing in a hotter environment.

You may find that the ocarina sounds better played flat or sharp of concert pitch, and in this case the pitch of the drone can be adjusted using the pitch slider. Heating or cooling the room is also an option.

It is also worth noting that not all ocarinas are tuned to the same pitch standard. Ocarinas tuned to A442 are relatively common in Asia, and the A442 instrument may sound better when all slightly sharp using a tuner set to A440.

If none of these options addresses the problem, you probably have a bad ocarina.

Playing in unison with a melody

Now that you know how to match the pitch of single notes to a drone, it's easy to start developing the intonation of melodies. The idea is just to play in unison with a well tuned rendition of the same melody, listen and compensate.

Start out playing over a reference at a low tempo to give yourself time to hear and correct errors, and speed up as you get better. You may find that your pressure change lags at first. That's normal and it will get easier after a few days.

Ideally, this performance should be without ornamentation. You will also find it easier to hear errors if the melody is played on an instrument with the same timbre (tone colour) as your ocarina.

There are a few different ways of getting clean performances to practice with:

• Work with a teacher, or friend whose pitch is reliable.
• Failing this, you can recreate the melody in a MIDI sequencer.
• Commercial recordings can be used, but you need to make sure they are in the same key you are playing in.

When playing over recordings, you can make use of a digital audio workstation (DAW) to alter the speed, or transpose the music into the key you are playing in. Audacity works reasonably well; more advanced software such as Reaper do sound better, though.

A final option is to use a dynamic practice drone. A dynamic drone listens to the pitch you are playing, and plays the closest in-tune note for you as a reference. Their biggest downside being the delay between when you play, and when the tool plays.

Audiation

Imagine if you could hear the melody in your head as you are playing. You could hear how your playing differs from the internal voice and compensate as needed.

This 'mind's ear' is called audiation, and we can start to develop it like this:

• Sing or hum a constant note.
• As you are singing, also hear a note in your head.
• Stop singing, but continue hearing the note in your head.
• Play the note you are audiating on your ocarina, and correct its pitch as needed.

Once you've gotten a feel for audiating one note, have a go at doing the same with a simple melody in a small range. It really doesn't matter what melody you use, feel free to make something up.

• Listen to a well tuned rendition of the melody, repeatedly if need be.
• As you listen, also hum and audiate it.
• Then alternate between singing, and hearing it in your mind.
• Finally, play the melody on your ocarina and correct the pitch using the internal voice.

Singing is a useful practice tool as the voice is built into the body. It doesn't matter if you can sing well, although if you have trouble controlling the pitch of your voice, there are some tips in Identifying melodic intervals by ear.

Playing music to a fixed drone

Sometimes, playing over a melody can be a hassle, especially if you don't have access to a teacher. Another option to help you play the ocarina in tune is to play over a fixed drone.

When you play over a fixed drone you'll notice that every note on your ocarina has a unique sound in relation to it. Give this a try:

• Find an online piano app or use a music keyboard if you have one.
• Choose any note, which will be your fixed note.
• Choose other notes and play both of them together.
• Notice how the combination sounds different when the notes are close together vs far apart.

The tool below also demonstrates how the different intervals sound against a drone. The note C is played continually and you can hear how different notes sound over it by selecting from the note list.

Hearing intonation in relation to a fixed drone is a matter of memorising how each of the notes should sound in relation to the drone, which is called relative pitch.

There are a few ways of doing that, but for now, just observe how the notes sound:

• Find a drone app such as the one here.
• Set the pitch of the drone to the key note of the tune you are playing. You can often find the key of a song by googling "song name key". The key is frequently also the last note in a melody.
• Set the octave of the drone to match the key note on your ocarina, or an octave lower than it. If your song is in C and the tune ends on the instrument's low C, set the drone to octave 4 or 5.

Play through your tune slowly, noticing how the different notes sound against the drone when they are in tune, sharp or flat. You may find it helpful to have a tuner visible initially.

Memorising intervals is discussed in much more detail in the article Identifying melodic intervals by ear, and as with audiation, learning to sing the intervals is very helpful.

Equal temperament vs just intonation

The most common tuning system used in music is Equal Temperament. This system is convenient as it allows scales to be built from all of the 12 chromatic pitches. However, it isn't perfect as most intervals are a few cents out of tune.

As you are playing against a drone, you may gravitate towards a different system called just intonation. Don't be surprised if a note sounds fine to your ear when a tuner says it's a few cents flat or sharp. Ocarinas are usually tuned for equal temperament, but it's easy to make the small change needed with breath pressure.

Using the above tool, the difference can be heard clearly in the fifth (G). If you set the slider 2 cents sharp, the slow warble will go away. The difference between just intonation an equal temperament is small; most are within plus/minus 10 cents.

Hearing intonation over instruments with different timbre

It is easiest to hear intonation when the reference tone has a similar timbre (tone colour) to the instrument your playing, as the combination of the two then produces the distinctive warble when the pitches aren't an exact match.

However, in the real world, you'll more often be playing with instruments with a different kind of timbre, such as a guitar, piano or possibly a synthesized instrument, and your intonation may not be so obvious.

In this example two notes are played that start in tune, one of which gradually goes flat. The pitch change is the same, yet the warble is more obvious in the first than the second, at least to my ear.

When you play with instruments with a different timbre, intonation errors make the sound kind of 'sour'. It's not easy to describe in text, and I feel is best learned by practical experience:

• If you have someone who can accompany you, an electronic keyboard is a great to practice against as the timbre can be changed to offer experience with intonation playing over a variety of other instruments.
• MIDI sequencers are great for practising alone as they let you place different instrument sounds aganst each other, and program changes in pitch.

Real music usually follows a chord progression, essentially a drone that changes pitch to sound best with the current melody notes. These are usually harmonically close to the notes of the melody.

How accurate does my intonation need to be?

How accurate intonation needs to be depends on quite a few factors including the speed of the music, the experience of the audience, and whether you are playing with others. Broadly speaking:

• When you play by yourself, exact intonation is more difficult to hear as there are no other sounds for errors to clash with. Weather anyone would notice depends mostly on the experience of the audience.
• When you are playing with accompaniment, the margin for error is smaller as there are other sounds against which any errors are going to clash.
• When you are playing in unison with other ocarinas, there is no margin for error. Any difference in pitch is going to create audible warbling, and most people will notice.

In slower music with chordal accompaniment, plus/minus 5 to 10 cents is usually OK. In very high tempo music any pitch errors of individual notes are less obvious and intonation is perceived more on average.

Of course, in musicality context is extremely important. Playing using wide swooping pitch bends sounds great when playing alone, but may not work so well with accompaniment.

Deliberate pitch errors can be used for musical effect. Small errors creating a slow beating can actually add interest and depth to the sound. Large errors causing rapid warbles create tension.

Intonation errors are basically errors because the music in which they occur was not written with that effect in mind.

Playing ocarinas in unison

Playing the same melody on multiple ocarinas in unison is quite challenging as even slight pitch errors stand out like a sore thumb.

Playing in unison is relatively easy to do with only two players, as intonation errors are easy to hear and can be minimised with practice.

I'd recommend if you want to do a duet, practising with someone who's intonation is already pretty reliable, as you could fall into a pattern where you're both in tune with each other, but considerably off with respect to Equal Temperament, or any other tuning system.

With three or more players, it becomes very difficult for anyone to hear when they are in tune.

When you hear a sound, you are hearing a wave that cycles some number of times per second, A440 for instance is a note that is cycling 440 times per second.

When you have two waves it's pretty easy to hear when they are exactly in tune because they add together constructively, producing a single louder wave. The beating you hear when one is out of tune is actually an interference pattern.

But with 3 slightly detuned waves, its more challenging as now there is no centre of pitch. A player changing their own pitch won't be able to hear when they are in tune, as regardless what they do, it will clash with one of the other tones.

The following tool demonstrates this issue. It plays numerous out of tune pitches, and overlaid on this is one more pitch you can control with the slider. Notice that nothing you do makes the result sound good.

A solution to this problem is to tune two players, and then introduce one more player at a time, them tuning their own playing in relation to the previous group.

It may be easiest to work up to this by each player practising alone, or with one other person, before bringing everything together. Introducing another instrument with a notably different timbre will also help.

Why timbre helps is explained by the harmonic series, and there is a very good video explaining it by Michael New.

Practising intonation

Personally, I think the most important thing to do when practising intonation at first is to choose one ocarina and stick with it. As we play, we maintain our intonation in several ways:

• First, we memorise the instrument's breath curve, so that we know roughly how much pressure will be needed to sound a given note in tune.
• Second, we listen to our playing and compensate as needed.

The breath curves of different ocarinas aren't very consistent, and it is much easier to internalise the breath curve of a single ocarina than multiple ones. We want to practice until we know how much pressure to use without thinking.

It is perfectly fine to work on your intonation by playing tunes as has been discussed through this article, but doing so has limitations. Some note transitions will be practised more than others.

Using exercises like scales and intervals lets you practice all of the possible note transitions. A scale is shown below, and there are examples of interval exercises on the page: 'Diatonic intervals for ocarina'.

Intonation on multiple ocarinas

Once you've internalised the breath curve of one ocarina, here's a suggestion for how one may practice intonation on a few different ocarinas:

• Pick a collection of ocarinas, perhaps two or three at first.
• Pick up one of them and play a song.
• Then pick up a different one, and play the same song aiming to be completely in tune.
• Repeat this, cycling between instrument.

Focus on being able to play every one of the ocarinas in tune from the start. When you pick up a given ocarina, imagine its breath curve in advance.

Playing in tune from the first note

A challenge arrases when one needs to start a performance, and have an accompanist join later as we may find that we are are flat or sharp and need to compensate in a hurry.

Singers work around this by listening to a note and hold the pitch in mind immediately before starting. The same principle can be made to work for ocarina. Have someone play the correct pitch in advance, and then play a few notes in advance to work out the breath pressure that will be needed.

The skill here is relative pitch, being able to hear a note, and from it project how the other notes in the scale should sound.

Going forward

Intonation is something that most people can learn with practice, and is a skill that improves over time. Just be patient.

I believe that the myths around hearing pitch relate to music education, and that many teachers do not appear to know how to teach listening skills effectively.

Learning how to play in tune is mostly a matter of comprehensible information. Humans are animals that evolved to take in and learn from information from their environment, and to learn anything, we need information that tells us what is correct and what is wrong.

If one hasn't been exposed to such information it makes sense that they won't know what to do. This is why someone with no prior experience may play completely out of tune and be oblivious, they haven't been exposed to pitch in a way they can learn from.

There are many ways of practising intonation today, using tuners, and crafted examples to learn from by ear. If you experiment with different options you should find and approach that works for you.