How to play the ocarina

Learning how to play the ocarina is pretty straightforward:

• You blow into the ocarina to play notes.
• Covering different combinations of holes determines which note sounds.
• If you finger the right notes in the right order ... now you're playing your favourite song!

The first thing to do when learning to play the ocarina is to find somewhere you can play without fear of embarrassing yourself. Being able to freely experiment with the instrument is essential because playing timidly WILL lead to bad habits.

If you can't play freely in your residence, perhaps if you live in an apartment or dorm, see if you can find:

• A park or field which is close to you, and out of the way of other people.
• Music practice rooms, which colleges and universities tend to have. This may be an option if you're a student.
• Finally, you may be able to play where you live if you can find a time when everyone else is away.

Another thing to note is how the room you're playing in impacts the sound of an ocarina.

Ocarinas are loud instruments and can be overpowering in small spaces. If you have a go playing outside in a park or other large open space, vs. a small room, the difference will be very obvious.

How to hold an ocarina

Holding an ocarina is a pretty important part of learning how to play, obviously you can't play much if it's sitting on a table, or in your pocket! Ocarinas are held with your hands approaching the instrument from opposite sides, like this:

You cover the finger holes with the pads of your fingers—the flat parts of your fingers immediately opposite your finger nails. There is one hole for every finger and both thumbs, which are labelled in the diagram below.

Note that there is a 3rd hole on the bottom called the voicing; this is where the sound is produced and is not covered while playing.

The left hand covers the left hand finger holes and thumb hole, and the right hand covers the right hand finger holes and thumb hole.

Notice that you can feel the edge of each hole underneath the pad of your finger. It is critical to keep the holes under the centre of the finger pad, as partially covering a hole will cause the ocarina to play out of tune.

Try to keep a gentle curve along your fingers, and hold the instrument as loosely as you can. You may find it useful to vary how tightly you are holding the ocarina, and observe how that feels:

• Hold it very loosely, and notice how it wobbles and feels unstable.
• Hold it very tightly, also called a 'death grip', and notice how your fingers are very hard to move.
• Now aim to find a happy medium, where the instrument is steady, without needless hand tension.

It is also worth noting that if you can bend your thumbs backwards, called 'hitchhiker's thumb', DO NOT do so in resting position. Keeping your thumb straight is essential both for supporting the instrument, and easily playing the high notes.

Never bend your right thumb backwards in resting position.

The thumb should be straight.

Blowing an ocarina

Now it's time to learn how to play some notes on the ocarina. You play an ocarina by blowing into the mouthpiece, the protruding part of the instrument.

Don't put a lot of the mouthpiece in your mouth! Rather, form an aperture between your lips, as if you were saying the word 'boo', and gently rest the mouthpiece against it. The mouthpiece should never come in contact with your teeth.

If you blow steadily, the ocarina will sound. If it sounds clean, that's great. But you may find that it sounds weak, or perhaps produces a high-pitched screech, not exactly what you want.

What's going on here, assuming you have a playable ocarina, is that you are either blowing far too hard, or far too softly.

Put your ocarina down for a moment and try these simple exercises:

• Put one hand on your belly and one hand on your ribs.
• Breathe in, so that the hand on your belly moves out, and the hand on your ribs stays still (called diaphragmatic breathing).
• Hum a constant pitch for the duration of a whole breath. You'll notice that the hand on your belly moves in slowly, and the air releases in a slow and gradual way.
• Finally, notice how this feels in your belly and replicate the same feeling without voicing the sound. Hold your mouth open and slowly let out the air.

Great. Once you've got the hang of that, give this a try:

• Take a deep breath.
• Say 'ha', similar to a laugh, and notice how the muscles in your chest become tense to push the air out.
• Say 'ha' again, but this time hold the muscle tension you identified, pushing all of the air out as fast as possible.

We can vary our blowing pressure anywhere between these two rates, and let's see what happens when we try it on the ocarina:

• Finger any note.
• Vary your breath, starting very low and ramping up.
• Notice how the sound of the instrument varies from weak at the lowest pressures, through a region that sounds clear, and screeches when blown very hard.

When playing, we'll be varying our breath like this, and you can find more breath control exercises in the article Blowing an ocarina correctly.

Discovering the breath curve

Finger the note G as shown below. White circles mean that the hole is open (finger raised), while black ones mean that the hole is closed. We are using one of the notes from the middle of the range, as having fewer holes to cover reduces the chance of mis-covering a hole.

Using a chromatic tuner like the one provided below, try blowing this note. As you do so vary your blowing pressure from low to high as previously discussed. What happens?

Somewhere in the middle of the pressure range, you'll find that the tuner shows the intended note of G. But as you blow harder or softer, you'll notice that the tuner says F♯, or perhaps even A or B if you blow really hard.

If you try this on the fingerings for the other notes shown above, you'll find that they all require a different pressure to produce the intended note. Higher notes must be blown harder, and we call this 'the breath curve'.

You may also find it interesting to notice that you can play the same note using different fingerings by changing your blowing pressure. The sounded note 'A' can be played by:

• Fingering 'A' and blowing at a normal pressure.
• Fingering 'G' and blowing much harder than normal.

In other words, the note that you are fingering is not necessarily the note you are playing. Using the correct breath pressure is essential.

Playing your first music on the ocarina

It's finally time to try playing some music on the ocarina. Playing a song on the ocarina is just a matter of using the correct fingerings and breath pressures in the right order.

So, the question is then:

• Which fingerings do I need to use?
• How long should each note be played for?

The easiest way to get started with this is to play something you've heard before. That way, you'll know roughly how the music should sound.

Playing your favourite songs is covered later in this section, How to play your favourite songs. But to demonstrate the basics, let's use a well-known children's tune: 'Hot cross buns'.

To play it:

• First, if you've never heard the song before, find a recording and listen to it.
• You might want to break it down, starting with the first 3 notes. Practice starting on B, and then fingering A, and finally G.
• Aim to move your fingers quickly when you move between notes, to create a clean transition.

As you start each note, you'll use your tongue to start and stop the airflow:

• Starting a note is like saying 'Thhhhhhhh', and finishing a note is similar to 'hhhhhhT'.
• Sequences of notes are like 'thhh, thhh'.
• Do not 'puff' to separate notes, it won't sound good.

If this doesn't come naturally, you can read a lot more about the process of articulating (separating) notes with the tongue in the articles Blowing an ocarina correctly, and Tongue posture and articulation.

It may be easier to start out tonguing a series of the same note, and introduce changing between notes later:

• Finger a single note and play a sequence of notes separating them with your tongue.
• Once that gets easy, play the notes of the melody as written, again separating them with your tongue.

Ideally, your finger movement should happen entirely while you're stopping the air with your tongue, to avoid creating off sounds.

It's perfectly normal that all of this will feel awkward at first. Keep going, it does get easier after a few days. Before long, you'll be playing the whole melody.

Phrasing, and where to breathe

A melody isn't just a string of random notes, they are made from groups of notes called phrases, much like the words in English are grouped into sentences. A phrase is a complete musical idea.

Phrases are most easily heard in songs, as they tend to follow the structure of the sung language. A phrase break is typically the same as where you'd put a comma or full stop.

For example, if you consider the lyrics "The ash grove, how grace-ful, how plain-ly 'tis speak-ing, the harp through it play-ing has lang-uage for me", it breaks into these phrases:

• Phrase 1: The ash grove, how grace-ful, how plain-ly 'tis speak-ing,
• Phrase 2: The harp through it play-ing has lang-uage for me.

Being aware of phrase breaks is important for a number of reasons:

• Firstly, a phrase break is the ideal place to take a breath, by cutting the last note of that phrase short. Breathing in the middle of a phrase, by comparison, usually sounds disjointed.
• Phrasing is also important in the pursuit of making your music sound musical.

On the ocarina, you can indicate the end of a phrase by stopping the air slightly longer with your tongue. Have a go at putting it into practice within hot cross buns. I've indicated phrase boundaries using thicker vertical lines (barlines).

Phrasing will be discussed in Musicality: how to make your ocarina playing sound good, but for now, it's fine to just be aware of it. When you listen to your favourite songs, see if you can hear their phrasing. Listen for where the singer breathes, and for the gaps in the music.

Something doesn't sound right?

As you have been playing, you may find that what you're playing doesn't sound right. First, make sure that all of your fingers are properly positioned, and that all of the finger holes are properly covered.

Another common cause of off sounds is breath control. The human body has two patterns of breathing:

• Shallow (clavicular) breathing, where the shoulders raise and lower.
• Belly (diaphramatic) breathing, where the belly moves in and out, and the shoulders do not move.

These are shown in the diagrams below:

Shallow breathing (bad)

Belly breathing (good)

It's important to breathe from your diaphragm, as it gives you much more control over your breath. To practice this:

• Find a mirror.
• Put your hand on your belly.
• Focus on breathing so that you can feel your hand moving in and out. Use the mirror to make sure that your shoulders do not move.

You can read more about this technique in the article Blowing an ocarina correctly.

The long tone exercise

Second, it's critical to learn to hold your breath at the same pressure over the whole duration of a note. Your playing won't sound right otherwise.

The long tone exercise is one way of developing breath control. You play a single note for the duration of an entire breath, aiming to start it cleanly, and hold it without wobbling, and then cut it off with your tongue before you start straining from running out of air.

For example:

• Finger a G as shown previously.
• Start the note using your tongue.
• Now hold the note for as long as you can.
• When you feel that you are running out of air, stop the note cleanly with your tongue.

Monitor the pitch you are playing using your tuner, or your ear, and try to eliminate fluctuations. You may find it easier to control your air by slightly engaging your abdominal muscles, a cue being 'draw the belly button towards the spine'.

What's next?

You now know the basics of playing the ocarina, congratulations. Continue reading the following parts to further develop your skill:

• The basics of rhythm.
• Learning the fingerings for your ocarina and making them automatic.
• Start playing your favourite songs.