by Howard Fosdick © FolkFluteWorld.com
Ocarinas are enclosed chambers with a mouthpiece you blow into, and with holes you cover with your fingers.
They split your breath inside to create sound waves that then reverberate inside the enclosure.
Their unique characteristics is that they can be molded into almost any shape. Take a look at the examples in the above photo. These are all playable musical instruments!
That's right, you can play tunes on a ceramic instrument in almost any fanciful shape you can imagine, from animals, to space warriors, vegetables, fantasy figures... all the way to a teacup. (And, by the way, you can both drink from and play songs on that teacup!)
The best part of this is that once you learn to play one of these instruments, you can play them all. All finger the scales in the exact same way.
So, your musical skills apply to any shape or design. No surprise that so many folks enjoy building collections of their favorite shapes and themes.
Let's explore these fanciful folk flutes further.
Two Kinds of Ocarina
There are two popular kinds of ocarinas.
In this photo, the black one on the left is called a submarine or sweet potato. It's shape shows you why.
The second kind of ocarina -- the blue one in the middle of the photo -- is called a seedpod or pendant ocarina. Again, the shape tells the tale: the blue ocarina looks like a seedpod.
Many seedpods are small enough to wear around your neck on a lanyard or necklace, and so they're called pendants. The rightmost oc shows how this works.
Most people use the names "seedpods" or "pendants" interchangeably. Going forward, we'll do that in this article.
What's a Pendant Ocarina?
Pendant or seedpod ocarinas come in almost any imaginable shape. Their defining characteristic is that they have four fingering holes on top.
Review the first photo in this article, and you'll notice that no matter how unusual the shape, every pendant in that photo has four top holes.
To be a playable musical instrument, those four holes must be of different sizes. This is important because there is an entire industry that makes unplayable seedpods in various cute shapes. None sound more than a few ill-tuned notes. They are collectibles, not musical instruments.
Oftentimes, they're referred to as whistles, as opposed to true ocarinas that play complete scales and songs.
Now you know how to determine whether a cute little collectible is a whistle or a true musical instrument. You don't want to accidentally buy a collectible believing that it's a musical instrument when it's not.
(My article How to Spot Fake Flutes has much more information on this topic.)
4 versus 6 Hole Pendants
Some pendant ocarinas only have the four top fingering holes. Others add two thumb holes beneath the instrument. These are referred to, respectively, as 4- and 6- hole ocarinas.
From a musical standpoint, the difference is important. 4 hole oc's play a range of only 8 whole notes, while 6 hole oc's play 10 whole notes. Obviously, the latter gives you more musical possibilities. Sometimes you need those extra couple notes to play certain tunes.
All seedpods, whether 4 or 6 hole, play all sharps and flats within their range.
The lowest note an oc plays is determined by its size. The bigger the oc, the lower its sound.
Many seedpods are tuned the same as soprano recorders. Their lowest note is C5, which is one octave above middle C on the piano.
Smaller pendants are often tuned several notes higher, at G5. These are often called G Sopranos. These tiny pendants are ideal wearing on necklaces due to their light weight.
Learning to Play
Whatever the pitch of the oc, and whatever its shape, you play the scales the same way. Here's how to hold a pendant, and how to finger the scale:
Those notes to the left of the two red lines are playable by both 4 and 6 hole oc's.
Those to the right of the red lines are only playable on 6 hole oc's. (On a 6 hole ocarina, all notes to the left of the red lines are played with both thumb holes closed.)
If you're familiar with submarine ocarinas, you know that they finger the scale very simply. You merely lift your fingers off the holes, on after the other, and it plays up the scale.
(Courtesy: Ocarina.co.uk)
You can see that the story is different with pendants. You have to memorize the fingering patterns for the different notes. Fortunately, it's not difficult. (In fact, the British introduce young schoolchildren to music by teaching them to play seedpods.)
Your first task is to learn to play the scale. Be sure to cover each hole entirely. If you leave any open space near your fingers, the note won't sound properly.
Another thing you'll learn is how hard to blow to hit the notes. On many -- but not all -- ocarinas, you blow a bit harder to play the highest notes in tune.
After you learn the notes and how to play scales, then learn the sharps and flats.
The lowest two sharps, C# and D#, require covering half a hole on the oc. This is called half holing. As you learn to play, you'll naturally pick up how to do this. (Fortunately, these notes aren't used in many tunes anyway.)
Do you read musical notation? If not, you can learn tunes through tabbed notation. This is simply a pictorial representation of how you finger the notes in the tune. Here's now the tune Amazing Grace looks in tab notation.
(Courtesy of OcarinaTabs.org)
The assumption with tabbed notation is that you know how the tune goes, you just need to see how you finger the notes to play it.
Selecting Your First Instrument
Now that you're ready to start with seedpods, you might be tempted to jump in and buy the absolutely cutest playable pendant you can find.
It's better to start with a simple seedpod shaped ocarina. These make it easiest to fully cover the holes with you fingers. This helps avoid the common beginner mistake of not fully covering holes when required.
Once you learn to play a simple pendant then you can advance to more interesting shapes.
The instrument should be keyed to C major. These oc's have the same lowest note as the soprano recorder, C5. They're often called Alto C ocarinas (though not everyone agrees on this nomenclature).
This ensures an oc of sufficient size that you can easily finger it. (This can be an issue with some of the smaller pendants.)
Also, more sheet music is available for instruments in the key of C than any other key.
The last decision is whether to buy a ceramic or plastic ocarina. Ceramic gives you the traditional ocarina sound. But plastic ensures consistent machine precision in manufacture.
In other words, there is a small chance of receiving a "dud" clay oc. Some aren't tuned accurately. Avoid this by buying in person and testing the instrument yourself. Or go plastic and ensure quality control in that way.
Your new ocarina should cost but $10 or $20 USD.
Once you get used to playing a simple pendant, here are two reputable vendors that offer great selections of original pendant designs:
Both these vendors sell quality ocarinas, so you don't have to worry about receiving an ill-tuned dud from them.
The photo montage at the start of this article intermixes pendants from both these vendors. The photo montage of pendants on this website's home page are from Songbird Ocarina.