The types of ocarina
There are many types of ocarina, and the term 'ocarina' often refers not to a single instrument, but to anything which makes sound using a hollow chamber. They range from sculptural whistles that only play one note, to concert quality musical instruments.
For anyone looking to play ocarinas as serious instruments, being aware of the different kinds of ocarinas is essential.
Sculptural whistles
Sculptural whistles are musical novelty items that can simulate the sound of bird calls and similar. They are produced in various shapes, including those representing birds and other animals.
Sculptural whistles are probably the first ocarinas which developed, and nowadays are often highly decorated with coloured glaze. They make great novelty items, but were never intended to be serious instruments.
Pre-Columbian, Peruvian, and Mexican ocarinas
Various ancient South American cultures used vessel flutes / ocarinas which as a group can be called 'Pre-Columbian ocarinas', and Mexico also has a similar tradition.
Exactly what these instruments were used for is the subject of debate. It is hard to understand their musical use, as they differ so much from other musical cultures. They appear to have been informed by the natural world, imitating sounds like birds, insects, thunder, wind sounds and rustling leaves.
The most common version of these today are reproduction tourist souvenirs, going under the name 'Peruvian ocarina', and frequently just 'ocarina'. These can be easily recognised by their flat shape, with intricate painted designs and 8 to 10 identically sized holes.
These reproductions are of extremely poor quality, with weak sound production and are not tuned. They are not good musical instruments, and are not worth considering as someone looking to play seriously.
However, historically, they were made to much higher standards. The history of these instruments has been studied by Susan Rawcliffe and Roberto Velázquez Cabrera, worth looking up if you are interested.
Transverse ocarinas (Italian and Asian)
The transverse ocarina is a 19th century Italian instrument. They are held across the body similar to a transverse flute, but are much shorter and more globular in shape.
Transverse ocarinas were originally designed as serious instruments, with a linear fingering system similar to that of the recorder or flute, and are fully chromatic. Single chamber transverse ocarinas have a range of about an octave and a fourth, and multichamber variants, which are discussed later, can extend the range past two octaves.
They have anywhere between 9 and 12 holes. The fingering system of all of these is almost the same, with minor additions that extend the instrument's range at the high and/or low end. See An introduction to the ocarina's fingering system.
If you learn to play any transverse ocarina, you can pick up a transverse ocarina with a different number of holes, and play it with only minor changes in fingering.
10 hole ocarinas
The 10 hole ocarina is the original design of transverse ocarina, created by Guiseppe Donati in 19th century Italy. They have 10 finger holes and play chromatically over a range of an octave and a fourth, for example C5 to F6.
Due to the physics of the instrument, having a smaller range allows 10 hole ocarinas to have a strong, clean sound through the whole range, and can be made to have a range of different playing characteristics, for instance:
- Play at low breath pressure, with a balanced volume through the whole playing range.
- Play at high pressure, sounding very loud throughout the entire range.
- Play with increasing breath pressure, having quiet low notes and loud high notes.
They can also attain quite a range of timbres, from 'pure' to 'reedy'. All of these things are set when the instrument is made, and as of writing very few makers are exploring this possibility space.
It is worth noting that 10 hole ocarinas may have more than 10 physical holes. What would be a single hole can be split into 2 holes to make sharp / flat notes easier to play, and such is called a 'split hole'. Adding a split hole to an ocarina does not change its classification.
Such things can easily be a source of confusion. It is an issue that arises from classifying ocarinas by the number of finger holes, although I am not aware of any better naming systems.
12 hole ocarinas
The 12 hole ocarina is a variation that was developed in Asia in the 20th century. These ocarinas use the same base fingering system as the 10 hole, but add two additional finger holes that are positioned next to other holes. They are played by covering one or both of the holes with the pad of one finger.
Today, 12 hole ocarinas are the most commonly available kind of transverse ocarina due to the popularity of the design in Asia.
The subholes, combined with an enlarged chamber, extend the instrument's sounding range downwards by 3 semitones. Thus, a 12 hole C ocarina would have a playing range from A4 to F6. The subholes can also be used to play accidental notes which require half covering holes on a 10 hole.
This additional range does come at the cost of reduced design freedom, and frequently worse sound quality. 12 hole ocarinas play with a steep pressure curve, having quiet low notes and loud high notes, and a relatively pure timbre.
11 hole ocarinas
The 11 hole ocarina is a compromise between the 10 hole, and 12 hole designs. They have one subhole which can be placed on either the left or right hand. The following image shows it on the right.
By eliminating one of the subholes, they retain much of the design flexibility of the 10 hole ocarina but providing one subhole allows a semitone below the instrument's base note to be played. That note is useful in a lot of music.
Inline ocarinas
Inline ocarinas are essentially the same as transverse ocarinas, and use an identical or near identical fingering, with 10, 11, or 12 holes. However, the mouthpiece is placed on the end of the chamber, with the body held straight out in front of you, much like a recorder or whistle.
The inline design allows your hands to be held straight, which may put less stress on your wrists. They may be better if you have arthritis, RSI or other disabilities. However, inline ocarinas are much less standardised, and made by fewer makers.
The design also creates some unique challenges:
- Inline ocarinas can feel less stable, as all of the instrument's weight is aligned on a single line between the player's thumbs and lips. The transverse by comparison forms a stable triangular distribution of weight between the two thumbs and lips.
- If one scales up an inline to make a bass or contrabass ocarina, the centre of mass moves much further forward from the player than a comparable transverse. This makes the instrument harder to handle.
- As a maker, I have found the inline design acoustically problematic. In summary, placing the voicing at the end of the chamber tends to make these ocarinas more prone to screeching when blown at higher pressures.
Transverse multichamber ocarinas
The transverse multichamber ocarina is essentially a single chamber transverse, onto which one or more additional small ocarinas have been attached, and tuned to play as a single instrument.
These multichamber ocarinas exist to provide a larger range of notes, as single chamber ocarinas can only sound a small range due to their physics. Sometimes harmonies can be played between the chambers, but this is not their main function.
Variations exist with two (double), three (triple) and rarely four (quad), chambers. The one shown below is a double. Each chamber in one of these instruments is entirely separate from the other chambers, having its own set of finger holes.
Unlike single chambered ocarinas, multichambers are classified by the number of chambers, and not hole count. This is done as the fingering system is not fully standardised and varies to some extent between makers.
Several tunings and fingering systems are used in multichamber ocarinas, which have various pros and cons, and suit different kinds of music. Knowing the exact fingerings for any single multichamber ocarina requires reference to the manufacturer's fingering chart.
For more, see 'Multichamber ocarinas and their tuning systems' and 'The fingering systems of multichamber ocarinas'.
In addition to providing more range, multichamber transverse ocarinas also have a few other benefits:
- Splitting the range over multiple chambers reduces the range produced by each chamber, and can improve tone quality.
- Most multichambered ocarinas only have one thumb hole, allowing the right thumb to just support the instrument.
Transverse double, triple, and quad ocarinas may be able to sound in harmony close to their chamber break. Ocarinas made by Giorgio Pacchioni for instance allow a small number of thirds, fourths, and fifths to be played in this way. See 'The fingering systems of multichamber ocarinas'.
Harmony ocarinas, which are explained later, are multichamber ocarinas that are designed to play in harmony. Due to their differing function, their design and ergonomics are quite different.
Pendant ocarinas (4, 5, and 6 hole ocarinas)
Pendant ocarinas were developed in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and are instruments which play an octave using 4 finger holes and a binary-like fingering system.
Pendant ocarinas can and have been used for skilled musical performance. However, they have many objective disadvantages, relative to the transverse ocarina:
- The limited number of holes does not allow pendant ocarinas to be tuned as accurately as transverse ocarinas. This can be seen if you measure the breath curve of one, and you must compensate by irregularly raising or lowing pressure.
- The fingering system frequently requires one hole to be closed, while opening another at the same time. It is thus easy to produce unintended 'chirps', if the holes are not opened / closed at the same time.
- Some chromatic (sharp / flat) notes can only be played in tune, with a volume that balances with surrounding notes, by partially covering finger holes.
That being said, pendant ocarinas do have a few unique advantages over the transverse:
- Pendant ocarinas can be made much smaller than a transverse while remaining ergonomic to play. They can thus be made to sound at a higher pitch, and may open up some unique musical possibilities.
- Being small, they can be worn as a pendant. They are great for spontaneous musical performances as you can always have one with you.
It is also worth noting that the production quality of pendant ocarinas is quite variable between makers. They are often produced as novelty items and not tuned properly.
I do want to stress that while having fewer holes can intuitively seem easier, the pendant ocarina is no easier to play well than any other kind of ocarina. The player must know how to create expression, and like all ocarinas, their pitch is unstable and much skill is required to play in tune.
Sculptural ocarinas
Sculptural ocarinas combine a playable ocarina, usually based on a transverse or pendant design, combined with a sculptural visual design. The two shown below were made by Oliver Gosselink and Ross Dubois.
They can be visually stunning, but as serious musical instruments, sculptural ocarinas are complicated to discuss as the visual design of a musical instrument is limited by:
- The player's need to hold and interact with the instrument (ergonomics).
- The acoustic constraints of producing a good sound.
In practice, optimising for playability puts many constraints on what can be done visually, and it is easy for a sculptural ocarina to put visual features in places that get in the way of a player, or use a body shape that harms sound quality.
Sculptural ocarinas exist on a spectrum between being primarily instruments, and primarily art pieces. Unfortunately, differentiating between these falls entirely on you as the player, and understanding the factors that make an ocarina ergonomic, as well as the factors that make an ocarina work, is essential.
But in summary:
- Ones designed first as musical instruments can be very playable. Visual features may be added with awareness of standard playing techniques, and the player's need to hold the instrument.
- Ones designed primarily for visuals can suffer in playability. An easy example is zoomorphic designs, ones designed to look like animals or birds. Animals did not evolve to be playable musical instruments.
It is often said that the shape of an ocarina isn't important, but in my experience, that is not true. Highly irregular shapes often have undesirable playing characteristics like small breath changes causing pitch jumps, airy high notes, or screeching.
Also, the pricing of sculptural ocarinas is higher due to the visual design. How good they sound is orthogonal.
Zelda, and media inspired ocarinas
Today, there are many ocarinas on the market which are designed to replicate the ocarina featured in "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time". The quality of them varies enormously, with many being very poorly made and not tuned properly.
Any ocarina made that closely follows the design depicted in the Zelda games will have problems. The 'instrument' in the game is a visual prop that gives little concern to playability:
- The finger holes of the original are placed following the button layout of the Nintendo 64 controller, and are not ergonomic to cover. Makers work around this by just adopting the transverse fingering system. However:
- The design is too rounded, which encourages fingers to slide off the body, making it feel unstable in the player's hands. 'Egg-shaped' ocarinas have poor ergonomics in general.
- They usually have airy high notes as the egg-shaped chamber and voicing design forced by the external shape is acoustically poor. The shape prevents use of a voicing neck, resulting in a very large chamber volume for a given pitch.
This trend has also led to some manufacturers selling ocarinas which are inspired by other media franchises with varying, often poor, playability.
For anyone interested in playing the ocarina as a serious instrument, I strongly recommend avoiding Zelda and other media inspired ocarinas entirely.
Xuns
The Xun, pronounced 'shoon', is a Chinese ocarina-like instrument that features a flute-like blowhole instead of a ducted voicing as found on the other designs listed here. I don't have much to say about them regarding serious playing, as they are functionally a different instrument, with its own playing tradition.
As a Chinese traditional instrument, little information is available about them in English. I have seen them with several fingering systems, one resembling the linear system of a 10 hole ocarina, and another which has 6 holes, and uses cross fingerings. I don't know if they are intended to play within the western 12 tone system, or Chinese microtonal scales.
The flute-like blowhole may allow more control and expressive playing, but they are also quite difficult to get sound from. Like all vessel flutes, opening holes lets air escape, and producing clean high notes demands fine focusing of the airstream. It takes a lot of practice.
Microtonal ocarinas
The microtonal ocarina is a design of ocarina with one or two large holes, covered by the palm of your hand. They are played by varying your hand position and blowing pressure.
The microtonal ocarina has been refined recently by Wesley Hicks. His design somewhat resembles a transverse ocarina with the two ends cut off, leaving just a voicing and two large holes that are covered by the palms of your hands.
What are they capable of? A lot more than you probably expect.
They can play western scales chromatically, or the scales of any other tradition if you wish. The only limit is your ability to hear the pitch in your mind, and adjust to match it. With a microtonal ocarina, you absolutely have to listen.
This design also allows for enormous control over both pitch, and sounding volume as you can blow softly with more of the holes open, or blow hard and slightly close the holes to maintain the same pitch at higher volume. It is much more intuitive to do than on a transverse.
I consider them great teaching tools as they force you to hear the pitch you want to produce, and adjust your hands as needed. They are also great for exploring the sound of arbitrary pitches over a drone, allowing you to rediscover unisons, thirds, and fifths.
The microtonal ocarina also offers an accurate visual representation of the player skill required to play any type of ocarina well. Having fixed finger holes can lead you to assume 'if I'm using the right fingering, I'm playing the right note', which isn't the case.
Harmony ocarinas
Harmony ocarinas are multichambers that are designed and tuned to play in harmony with themselves. They typically consist of two chambers, each of which is played by a different hand.
Unlike multichamber transverse ocarinas, the base pitches of the two chambers are tuned in unison, or with a small interval like a third or fifth. Each chamber is played by a different hand, allowing different notes to be fingered, creating harmony.
These instruments can sound wonderful in the right setting, however, design challenges and the limited number of available fingers mean that these instruments are quite technically limited.
Harmony ocarinas are also not standardised at all. The chambers may be positioned side by side similar to an inline ocarina, or physically separated, joined by external ducting. Fingerings and tuning also vary a lot between makers.
The following gives some general advice, but if you would like to explore harmony ocarinas, your best bet is to look for manufacturers and read their documentation.
Tuning
Harmony ocarinas are tuned using one of two approaches:
- Tuning all of the notes to sound at the same pressure allows for arbitrary notes to be fingered, but higher notes will tend to sound airy.
- Alternately, tuning with an identical pressure curve allows the instrument to produce a clean tone, but can only play in harmony at a fixed interval, using identical fingerings on both chambers.
These trade-offs arise because as finger holes are opened, air can escape. The player must blow harder or the sound gets more and more airy. This is a problem for designing harmony ocarinas because, ideally, different chambers need to be blown at different pressures, and people only have one mouth.
This is also why most harmony ocarinas use a rectangular sound hole, as they can sound at the same pressure over a larger range without becoming airy.
Fingerings
As noted, the fingering systems of harmony ocarinas typically assign one hand to one chamber. This allows them to be played independently, but is also limiting as fewer fingers are available for each chamber. There are two different approaches: linear, and cross fingered.
Linear
A linear fingering system, where each finger is assigned to a note sequentially, means that only about 6 notes can be played on each chamber. The example below depicts such a fingering with the chambers tuned at an interval of a fifth. The chambers have identical fingerings, but sound different notes. 1, 2, 3, 4 and T are the fingers: pinky, ring, middle, index, and thumb.
Cross fingered
Some harmony ocarinas utilise a variation of the pendant fingering system, arranged linearly for 4 fingers of each hand. With this system, each chamber can attain a range of about an octave, at the cost of tuning accuracy.
The example fingering below demonstrates an ocarina with two chambers tuned to the same base pitch, so using the same fingering on both chambers would sound the same note. Ocarinas using this system may also be tuned with the chambers at a different base interval, like the previous example with linear fingering.
Huaccas
The Huacca, pronounced 'waka', is a vessel flute with multiple chambers tuned to play in harmony. They are similar to harmony ocarinas, but the term 'huacca' refers to a specific design that is relatively standardised, and worth using to avoid confusion.
They have two or three globular chambers either arranged side by side, or in a triangle, and wind-ways combined into one for the player to blow. On most of them I have seen, the base pitches of the chambers are tuned in unison.
On two chamber instruments, both chambers have finger holes. On ones with 3 chambers, the 3rd chamber is a drone tuned to play one continuous pitch.
