Stop chasing 'easy': why 'easy to play' marketing harms ocarina learners

Ocarinas are widely marketed as easy to play, touting the instrument's simple fingering system and how easy it is to make a sound. Unfortunately, these things are only a small part of the skill required to play the instrument well.

An instrument looking simple or complex has very little bearing on how difficult it is to play because most of the skills required to play interesting music have nothing to do with the physicality of the instrument itself:

• Knowledge of music theory.
• Being able to control the breath with precision.
• Ear training, the ability to hear pitch errors.
• How to practice effectively (awareness of how the human brain learns).
• Knowing what you need to practice in order to learn (you don't know what you don't know).
• How to find or adapt music to the instrument (this is quite complicated because ocarinas have a very limited range).
• Ability to read some kind of music notation or play by ear.
• Ability to audiate (hear in the mind) the rhythm and pitch of a melody.
• Ability to perform rhythms with good accuracy / timing.
• Being aware of how an instrument's pitch changes with temperature.
• Being able to perform many different kinds of articulations and ornaments.
• Understanding phrasing, and how to use articulations and ornamentation to create it.
• Awareness of the stylistic values of the idiom / tradition of the music you are performing.
• Knowing where to breathe while playing in a way that sounds musical.

Many ocarina retailers market the instrument as 'easy to play' to naive learners by completely neglecting to mention these factors. They provide learning materials that make playing appear simple, such as ocarina tabs, and omit a huge amount of critical knowledge in a desire to provide small method books.

The problem is that, unless someone has experience with playing other instruments, this missing information will quickly stymie the learner's ability to learn. Mistakes will be made, go unnoticed, and then become ingrained.

Players simply can not learn how to play good music, because the information they would need to do so has not been communicated to them, and they are unlikely to look for it under the pretence of the instrument being 'easy'.

This whole situation is absurd. People have been playing musical instruments for hundreds of years and it is very well known what needs to be done to learn to play one well. It is simply necessary to have the information of what to learn / practice, and the motivation to do the work.

One's time is a non-renewable resource, and chasing easy results in years of time being lost with very little to show for it. Instead, it is a far better idea to focus on methods that work. To have all of the information that one needs to know available to them.

While it is not possible to change the fact that playing musical instruments is complicated, it is possible to provide teaching materials that allow a learner to understand the facets of what they need to learn, and guide them through the complexity in an approachable way.

This is the goal of my book, Serious Ocarina Player. It provides you with everything needed to start mastering the ocarina.