Why does my ocarina have airy high notes?
Ocarinas can have airy high notes for several reasons, often because of dirt in the windway, or because the instrument is not being blown with enough air pressure. Airy high notes are also a symptom of badly made ocarinas.
You may not be blowing hard enough
A very common reason that an ocarina will have airy high notes is that you are not blowing hard enough. As holes are opened, air can escape the chamber. To compensate for this, you must blow harder, or the tone will become more and more airy.
This mistake is easy to identify: the high notes will also be flat if you are under-blowing them. You can use a chromatic tuner to check that the note you are fingering is sounding at the correct pitch. See 'Playing the ocarina in tune' for more information.
The windway may be blocked
If your ocarina has suddenly become airy, this may be due to dirt in the windway; dirt can build up over time, and insects may crawl into the windway. Any obstruction in the windway is a problem, as it creates turbulence and increases airiness.
You can clean the windway by folding a strip of paper and pushing it through. Note that windways are normally much larger at the mouthpiece end than at the voicing. If your paper gets stuck, reduce the number of folds – don't force it through. For larger obstructions, you would be better off pushing the paper through from the voicing end.
You may be blowing into the windway at the wrong angle
How you blow an ocarina has a significant impact on the tone you get from the high notes. It's important to hold the ocarina so the air flows directly into the windway, without a 'kink' at the lips, as this creates turbulence.
- Keep your head up and hold the ocarina straight in front of you.
- Use a mirror to see what you are doing.
You may have a bad ocarina
If your ocarina still sounds airy after checking the three points above, it is likely poorly made.
Unfortunately, ocarinas are often produced as decorations or novelty items which are not designed to play well. The page 'Identifying playable ocarinas' will tell you what you need to know to identify ocarinas designed as serious instruments.
It really isn't worth skimping because a poor instrument makes your job as a player much more difficult. In relation to other instruments, good ocarinas are not expensive.
In other sources, you may have encountered a technique called the 'acute bend', which purportedly improves the sound of an ocarina's high notes by shading the ocarina's voicing against your chest.
I believe this is an acoustic effect that increases the perceived loudness for the player by bouncing sound off their chest into their ears.
From what I've observed of others doing this, it makes little difference to a listener's perspective. It can actually sound worse because the sound coming from the voicing is directed downward, away from the audience.
I do not recommend using this technique, as it is ergonomically awkward and looks silly in a performance. Any ocarina marketed as 'needing' this technique is a bad instrument.
You may be shading the finger holes
Even if a finger hole is open, there is a notable distance where the presence of a finger will 'shade' the hole, causing the ocarina to play flatter than it should. If you blow harder to compensate, the increased airflow makes the ocarina sound more airy.
Watch yourself play in a mirror and make sure you are lifting your fingers far enough. To check how the high note sounds under optimal conditions, play it while holding the ocarina by its ends, so no fingers are close to the holes.
Your palm may be in the airstream
As you play higher notes, you blow harder. If this fast-moving air hits your left palm, it makes a noise. Consequently, you should keep your hand out of the airstream when playing the high notes.
If you're using the three-point grip, an easy way to do this is to open the pinky hole by rotating the left hand at the wrist, pivoting on the index finger.
You may be creating turbulence with your tongue position
The position of your tongue has a large impact on tone clarity: raising the back of your tongue, or positioning its tip too close to your teeth, results in a noisy tone.
- Keep the rear of your tongue at the base of the mouth at all times.
- The tip of your tongue should also rest at the base of the mouth, in line with the lip and covering the teeth, unless you are tonguing a note.
There is another valve in the throat called the 'glottis', which is the 'lid' that closes if you hold your breath with your mouth open. When playing the ocarina, the glottis should be fully open at all times, as restricting this will also harm the high notes.
The ocarina may be fine, but ...
Your perception of the instrument is not the same as your audience's
How an ocarina sounds to you differs from how it sounds to an audience. The high notes will sound more airy to you because the ocarina is only inches from your ears. Also, ocarinas have irregular sound projection, and most volume goes directly forward, away from the voicing – and you by extension.
This isn't a problem from the audience's perspective. Wind noise is much less audible to someone listening from a distance.
Because of this, I strongly recommend finding out how your instrument sounds to a listener. Get someone else to blow it – preferably using good technique – and have a walk around. You may be surprised by how different it sounds.
The sound you hear is affected by room acoustics
The ocarina's pure timbre is quite susceptible to an acoustic phenomenon called 'comb filtering'. The sound reflections within a room may make certain notes sound stronger or weaker than they actually are. Try playing outside in a wide open space to get a true sense of how your instrument sounds.
Psychology is also a factor
If the ocarina is your first instrument and you suddenly notice the airiness, it may be a psychological effect. It is easy to miss how your instrument sounds due to 'selective awareness'.
When you first play an instrument, everything is a conscious effort: your mind is focused on multiple new concepts, such as fingerings and breath control. As your attention is on those things, you don't notice the sound of your instrument.
As you spend more time playing music, these things become subconscious, and you can pay more attention to what you actually sound like. Thus, you may suddenly notice aspects that were always there, but you were not aware of. This is a good thing, as it means that you are making progress.
The ocarina is airy by design
Some ocarinas are airy by design, traditional Italian style ocarinas often have this characteristic.
These ocarinas were designed to fill large music halls and have a large voicing to achieve a high volume. A side effect of this is that it makes the sound more airy. This isn't a problem from the audience's perspective, as wind noise is much less audible to someone listening from a distance.
Also, an airy timbre isn't inherently bad and can be highly effective for some types of music. The problem is rather an imbalanced ocarina, with a clean low end and airy high end.
More holes equals more airy high notes
The more holes an ocarina has, the more airy-sounding its high notes will tend to be. This is a side effect of the instrument's lossy physics.
A 10-hole ocarina will generally have a cleaner-sounding high end than a 12-hole ocarina, but this depends on the instrument's quality. Multichambers are even better, as the individual chambers only provide a small portion of the total range.
