Twelve holes, and the fingering for every note
This is a 12-hole alto C ocarina, the standard modern one, with 21 notes from A4 to F6. Play a note and the ocarina above the keys shows how to finger it: a dark hole is covered and a light one is open. There are eight finger holes on top, four for each hand; two thumb holes underneath, drawn dashed; and two small subholes beside the middle-finger holes, which you close by sliding the finger forward over both holes at once.
The pattern is easy to see once you play up the white notes. From the low A, with everything covered, each step up opens one more hole and never closes one: the left subhole for B, the right subhole for C, then the right hand from the little finger inward, the left hand from the ring finger inward, the two thumbs, and last the left little finger, which stays down until the very top because it is where you hold the instrument. The C the instrument is named after has 2 holes open — the two subholes — and ten covered.
The music is written an octave lower than it sounds, so the keys and the song tabs show written notes and the drawing tells you what you are hearing — the low A is written A3 and sounds A4.
It is the open area, not the hole
This is the fact that makes an ocarina different from every other wind instrument. A flute or a recorder is a tube, and its note depends on where the first open hole is, because that is where the tube effectively ends. An ocarina is not a tube. It is a vessel — a closed body of air behind a mouthpiece, the physics of blowing across a bottle — and its pitch depends on how much of it is open in total. Where the holes are does not come into it.
You can see it in the charts themselves. For the D♯ in the lower octave, OcarinaSongbook closes the right subhole and opens the little-finger hole next to it; Imperial City does the opposite. Both charts call the result D♯, and both are right, because two small holes of about the same size are the same amount of opening. Every sharp and flat on this chart is built the same way: the white note above it with one small hole closed again, which takes away just enough opening to drop a semitone.
The same fact explains three things you will notice. An ocarina’s holes are different sizes, because each one has to add the right amount of opening rather than sit in the right place. It cannot overblow into a second octave the way a recorder does, because a vessel has only one resonance to play on, which is why its range stops at an octave and a sixth. And it sounds so pure, because with only one resonance there is nothing to support the extra harmonics that give a whistle its edge.
How to play it
Hold a key to blow the note and let go to stop — an ocarina sounds only while air goes in, so a note lasts exactly as long as your finger stays down. Slide along the keys without lifting to move from note to note in one breath, which is a slur on the real instrument: the fingers change and the air does not.
On a computer keyboard the letters run up the ocarina a semitone at a time, Q for the low A, and every note has one. Hold the key down for as long as the note should last. The labels can show the scale numbers the song tabs use, the letter names, both or neither.
Songs to play
Press Play a song under the instrument and pick one. The ocarina plays 19 of the 22 public-domain songs here. Happy Birthday to You and Amazing Grace climb to the G above the top F, one note past the end of an alto C ocarina, and Mo Li Hua · Jasmine Flower (茉莉花) dips below the low A.
Play plays a song for you and shows each fingering as it sounds, which is the quickest way to learn them. Practice waits on the next note and shows its fingering before you play it. Play along closes a ring on each note in time with the music and tells you at the end how close you were.
Every song here is public domain. Many of the melodies people most want to play on an ocarina come from video games and are under copyright, so they are not in the library.
What the sound is made of
Nothing here is a recording. Each note is built from what an ocarina is: an almost pure tone, with traces of the next two harmonics far below it; breath noise passed through the same resonance as the note, which is the airy halo round every ocarina note; a little hiss from the windway; and a short burst at the start where the tongue releases the air. The pitch rises a few cents into each note, because an ocarina’s pitch climbs with breath pressure and a tongued note starts before the pressure has arrived. The levels of all of it are modelled rather than measured from one instrument.
Got a real ocarina that sounds off? Its pitch was fired into the clay, so what you can change is your breath, and the ocarina tuner shows how to read the breath curve and tell whether it is the instrument or the player.
More instruments you can play here
The online kalimba and the online lyre play the same songs with the same number tabs, and the online violin is the other instrument here whose notes last exactly as long as you hold them.
Frequently asked questions
Does it matter which hole I open on an ocarina?
Much less than on a flute or a recorder. An ocarina is a vessel — a closed body of air with holes in it — and its pitch depends on how much of it is open in total, not on where the openings are. Open a small hole or a different small hole of the same size and you get the same note. That is why the fingering charts for ocarinas disagree with one another in places and are all correct, and why an ocarina’s holes can be anywhere the hands fall. It is also why every note needs a different amount of breath: the note is set by the opening, but pressure pushes it sharp.
What notes does a 12-hole alto C ocarina play?
An octave and a sixth: from A4 with every hole covered to F6 with every hole open, 21 notes counting the sharps and flats. It is called a C ocarina because its scale is C major, and the C that names it is played with the ten finger and thumb holes covered and the two small subholes open. The two subholes then reach down past it to B and A.
What are the two small holes on a 12-hole ocarina?
Subholes. Each sits beside a middle-finger hole, and you close one by sliding that finger forward so its pad covers both holes at once. With both subholes open you have the ordinary ten-hole ocarina; closing them extends the range down below the C, to B and then A. The left one alone gives B, and the right one alone gives the B♭ between A and B.
Can an ocarina play two notes at once?
No. It is one body of air with one resonance, so it sounds one note, and that is how this one behaves: start a new note and the last one stops, exactly as changing fingers does on the real instrument. Ocarinas that play harmony are double or triple ocarinas, which are two or three of these built side by side and blown together.
Is this a recording of a real ocarina?
No. Each note is built as you play it, from what an ocarina physically is: a nearly pure tone, because a vessel has only one resonance for the edge tone to drive, with breath noise shaped by that same resonance, a short tongued start, and a pitch that rises a few cents into each note as the breath pressure arrives. Those levels are modelled rather than measured from a particular instrument. Nothing downloads, so the first note sounds as soon as you touch it.