A Teacup You Can Play!

by Howard Fosdick © FolkFluteWorld.com
New and Updated for 2025

Ever heard of a teacarina? It's both a playable flute and a teacup.

That's right, it's both a fully capable musical instrument -- and a teacup from which you can drink. It's a washable, microwaveable ceramic teacup that holds the standard five ounces of hot brew.

This article tells you everything you need to know about the teacup flute. We'll explain how to play it, how they sound, and where to get all the free resources you need to learn and enjoy this unique musical instrument.

Before we explore their musical capabilities, here's how these ceramic flutes look:

There are also different teacup designs for each of the four seasons. These match the seasons in Japanese tea rituals.

The Japanese tea ceremony has a long history. It was elevated to an art form in the 1500s by Sen no Rikyū. For some, it represents a beautiful, serene, and comforting art form to be shared with guests. For others, it marks a special event or completes a celebration. Still others emphasize its meditative aspects with its spiritual overtones deriving from its Buddhist roots.

The seasons have special signficance in the tea ceremony. Tea rituals vary for each season, and each employs different utensils and equipment.

Thus there are four seasonal teacarinas. Here they look, front and back:

I hope these photographs do these teacups justice. They're really quite lovely, intricate patterns set to a background of bright white porcelain.

How They Sound

One might expect the teacarina to be a novelty item rather than a true musical instrument. A cute collectible but not a capable musical vehicle.

This is emphatically not the case. This instrument sounds as good as most ocarinas and is superior to many. I'd call its voice warm and soothing.

Listen to a couple sound samples:

• Japanese Spring, a tune composed by the author (played on 6 hole teacarina)

• An improv by Ágoston Péter (played on 6 hole teacarina)

• Summertime (George Gershwin) (played on 4 hole seasonal teacarina)

The Instrument

Teacarinas are available from STL Ocarina in the USA, Ocarina King in the UK, and Amazon everywhere.

You can buy them individually, or as a set of four. All are priced the same, which ranges from $18 USD to $30 each, depending on where you buy.

Whichever design you choose, all are manufactured by TNG in Taiwan, one of the world's larger ocarina makers. TNG has a good reputation for quality control -- when the price is appropriate. (You can't expect great quality control from any ocarina vendor if you buy an item where the price is very low.) This is important because there are many producers of cheap, substandard ocarinas that are poorly tuned.

The flute comes securely shipped in a sturdy, reusable cardboard box, tucked in tight with bubble wrap. The chances of shipping damage are about nil. The box is useful for when you want to store or securely transport the instrument. The package also includes a fingering chart.

The teacarina is an ocarina -- hence its name. An ocarina is a type of flute in which your breath resonates inside an closed chamber.

This differs from recorders and concert flutes, which are essentially open-ended pipes with fingering holes poked in them.

Implementation as an ocarina is what enables the manufacturer to craft the teacarina into its unique shape. It also gives it its own special sound, the kind of rounded, full-bodied voice unique to ocarinas. You can easily distinguish how ocarinas sound versus other musical instruments (as you may have noticed in the above sound samples).

6 Versus 4 Hole Confusion

It's important to point out that at various times some websites have described the teacarina as a 4 hole ocarina. Others have described it as having 6 holes. And still others don't tell you which you're buying!

Let me explain why this is important...

From the standpoint of a drinkable teacup or a collectible, it doesn't matter at all whether your teacarina has 4 or 6 fingering holes.

But from a musical standpoint, it matters a lot.

4 hole ocarinas -- those without the two thumb holes beneath -- only play a scale of 8 whole notes. In contrast, a 6 hole ocarina plays 10 whole notes. Those two extra notes really matter to an instrument with this limited range. It considerably expands your repertoire of playable songs.

The fingering chart below makes this difference clear. Those notes to the right of the red lines are those that are playable only by 6 hole ocarinas -- and not 4 hole oc's.

You can see how the extra two thumb holes allow the musician to play two more whole notes higher in the scale. And two extra accidentals, as well.

On the other hand, some find 4 hole ocarinas easier to play because you can more securely grasp them when playing. You don't have to place your thumbs into holes at a specific location on the backside of the instrument. Instead, you can put your thumbs on the rim of the cup for greater stability.

What Are You Buying? My Personal Experience

When I first bought a teacarina through the STL Ocarina website a few years ago, the product was described as a "4 hole ocarina." But that was incorrect. I received the 6 hole ocarina shown below.

This first photo shows the two thumb holes on the player's side of the oc (the hole is the middle is the sounding hole and doesn't count). The next photo shows the four fingering holes on the front of the instrument:

The bottom of the teacup I received is marked TNG. So it was made by TNG in Taiwan and distributed and sold by STL Ocarina in the U.S.

In December 2024, I bought the four seasonal teacarinas, also through the STL Ocarina website. These were described as "4 hole ocarinas," and that's exactly what I received. None of the four seasonal oc's had a marking of any kind beneath.

Meanwhile, at the same time, over at the Amazon website, the product description gave no indication as to whether they're shipping a 4 or 6 hole teacarina. There's no clear statement as to which oc you'll receive!

One customer posted a few photos in 2023 that appear to show a 6 hole oc. On the other hand, my friend bought one in January 2025 and received a 4 hole oc.

Either preference is valid. Some will want 4 holes and others, 6. The point is that if it's important to you which one you buy, you need to very carefully check the seller's description and verify what you'll receive. Keep in mind that what I've written here could very well change by the time of your purchase.

Diatonic or Chromatic?

Here's another discrepancy you'll run into in descriptions of the teacarina. Many sellers state that the teacarina plays only "8 diatonic notes." By diatonic, they mean that the teacarina only plays whole notes, but no sharps or flats (aka, chromatics).

That's not entirely accurate. Like all other quality ocarinas, the teacarina plays whole notes plus all sharps and flats between them.

The above fingering chart makes that very clear.

Closely inspect the fingering chart, and you'll see that you can in fact play most accidentals without any special skill. All you need to do is memorize their fingering.

On the other hand, you must cover half of a hole to hit the lowest two chromatic notes. This half-holing requires some practice but is definitely within the skill level of the typical player.

So while some say that ocarinas like the teacarina are diatonic, it is more accurately described as a chromatic instrument. In reasonably competent hands it is fully capable of playing all sharps and flats within its range.

How to Play It

The fingering chart highlights one additional point. The teacarina is what is called a pendant or seedpod style ocarina. You finger it differently than traditional sweet potato or submarine shaped ocarinas.

This photo shows the difference between the two basic kinds of ocarinas. Two submarines are on the left side of the photo, and two seedpods on the right side. You can see that seedpods can be molded into many different shapes. Hence, the teacup shape of the teacarina.

To play the scale in a traditional sweet potato oc, you just progressively lift up your fingers, one after the other. It's dead simple.

You can see by the above fingering chart that there is no such obvious pattern with seedpods like the teacarina. Instead, you must memorize the fingering shown in the chart. This takes a few days but it is not difficult.

After all, musical education for many grade school children in the U.K. starts on seedpod ocarinas! That proves how easy they are to learn.

Your first task in mastering the teacarina is learning how to play the scale. Get comfortable with what breath pressure works best for each note. Get used to how the oc feels in your hands, and where to place your fingers.

Remember that you when you cover holes to sound a note, you must cover each hole completely to ensure you sound the note correctly and in tune. Leaving just the tiniest air gap over a hole you're supposed to cover leads to faulty notes. This is why beginners often produce some odd sounds -- they haven't yet mastered how to fully and consistently cover holes.

After learning the whole notes, proceed to learning the most commonly used accidentals, F# and B♭. The great majority of tunes you'll play use the whole notes plus either of these two common accidentals.

During this early learning period, you'll start to form "muscle memory" for where to place your fingers to reach the fingering holes. This process takes perhaps a week or so of practice. You need to develop an instinctive feel so that you fully and properly cover a hole when required.

If you've played other seedpod ocarinas, you won't have to memorize the fingering pattern for the notes. You'll already know that. But you will still have to form that muscle memory unique to the teacarina, as its fingering positions are specific to its unusual shape.

If you've never played a seedpod ocarina, memorizing the fingering patterns for all the notes is your first task. Move on to the chromatics after you master the whole notes.

Two notes that might require some practice are low C# and D#. These require half-holing. Learning this technique is not especially difficult, and you won't much use these notes anyway.

You'll find it pretty easy to play all the other notes of the scale. The one exception is the highest note of the 6 hole version, high E (all fingering holes open). This note sounds airy. If you have trouble hitting it, try altering the angle at which you hold the instrument to your mouth. And try changing your breath pressure. You'll discover you can play this note but only if you adjust the positioning of your air flow.

The highest note on the 4 hole teacarina is easy to hit and plays strong and true -- no airiness at all.

Some find the 4 hole teacarina a little easier to hold than the 6 hole because you can place your thumbs on the rim of the cup when playing. They find this more convenient than fitting their thumbs into the two backside thumbholes of the 6 hole oc.

Breath Pressure and Tuning

Where do you blow into this instrument? You place your mouth on the rim of the cup and blow into a tiny slit. This photo from above the teacup shows where.

The body of the ocarina is comprised of the thin open space between the inner and outer walls of the teacup. The location of the blow slit and the fingering holes give you access to it.

Note that the teacarina -- like nearly all ocarinas -- is not tunable. Unlike a recorder or concert flute, there is no separate mouthpiece you can adjust in or out to raise or lower its pitch.

The secret to playing an oc in tune is to make sure it's at normal room temperature before you play. Exposing it to temperature extremes will slightly raise or lower its voice. Of course, you can also affect its pitch by how hard you blow into it. Blow harder to raise pitch, and softer to lower it.

By the way, in case you're wondering, it is possible to play the teacup while it contains tea. (Though why you would want to, only you would know!) The vessel portion that contains the liquid is water-tight, as shown in the photo. It is strictly isolated from the hollow ocarina shell that you blow into, finger, and play.

Tea Ceremonies

Given that the teacarina is a fully capable musical instrument, you might enjoy playing it in Japanese or similar pentatonic scales. This conforms to traditional tea rituals. The first sample tune above, Japanese Spring, illustrates this.

To encourage your exploration in this realm, a fingering chart for some of these non-western scales is provided at the end of this article.

Free Resources

The lowest note, or base note of the teacarina is C5. That's one octave above middle C on the piano.

C5 is also the base note of many other key-of-C instruments. These include the soprano recorder, C-major ocarinas, and the C tin whistle. So you can play sheet music written for any of these other instruments. Plus music written for concert flute -- assuming it stays within the limited range of the teacarina.

Thus there is an absolute ton of free sheet music available for download. You never need buy any.

Access that free sheet music here.

There are also many other free tutorials, tools, and other free resources available.

As a Teacup

You can use the teacarina in the same manner as any other teacup. It holds the same standard five ounces.

As both a tea drinker and oc player I enjoy sipping from it. How nice to grip an attractive ceramic cup rather than the plastic mugs many of us drink from otherwise.

The teacarina is machine washable and microwave safe, so it's as versatile as any other teacup in your cupboard.

Remember that all ocarinas are enclosed flutes, so you might want to occasionally bathe your teacarina in warm water. This removes any detritus that may have solidified within the instrument as a result of the moisture in your breath. If you don't do this now and then, over time you'll find that the instrument will no longer voice notes clearly and in tune.

Last Thoughts

I initially bought a teacarina for its novelty value. It intrigues bystanders right off. Everyone asks about it when you finish drinking your tea... and then play a song with your cup!

Expecting that I was buying a novelty, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the teacarina sounds so pleasing. This is a high quality musical instrument. All notes are easily playable (except that topmost note for the 6 hole version, E6, which is questionable on many ocarinas). Notes are all in tune with each other throughout the scale.

Given the teacarina's unique shape, holding it while playing initially feels a little less natural than the typical ocarina. But you get used to this very quickly and develop playing abilities equivalent to what you have with any other oc.

I enjoy playing the 6 hole version of the teacarina. You can play most tunes with its full 10 note range. Strictly from a musical standpoint, a 6 hole oc is greatly preferrable to a 4 hole oc.

I'm also very pleased with my set of seasonal 4-hole teacarinas I bought directly from STL Ocarina. They're stunning little artworks (though I do wish they had 6 holes). Everyone remarks on their beauty and how they cleverly combine a teacup with an ocarina.

If you've never played seedpod-style ocarina before, don't let that fingering pattern put you off. It won't take you but a few days to learn.

Plus, it opens up the entire universe of 4 and 6 hole ocarinas to you. Here are some of the other intriguing instruments you'll know how to play after you learn the teacarina:

STL Ocarina and Songbird Ocarina are probably the two best-known US sellers of fun ocarinas like these.

***** SUMMARY *****

***** PLAYING OTHER SCALES *****

Your teacarina is a fully capable musical instrument. It's fun to experiment with songs in the Asian pentatonic or other scales. And it seems appropriate to the Japanese tea ceremony to play tunes based on an Asian musical scale.

Here are fingerings for scales other than the standard western scale.