Got a New Ocarina? Start Here

Step 1 Check your ocarina

Start the microphone and play one note at a time: the dial names the note and how many cents sharp or flat it is. Audio is analysed on your device and never leaves it.

There is nothing to tune — so check what you can

An ocarina’s pitches were fixed when the clay was fired: no slide, no joint, no peg. What moves a note is your breath— harder is sharper, softer is flatter — and each higher note needs a little more air than the one below it. So the tuner’s job on a new ocarina is to tell you whether a note that sounds off is the instrument or the air. Play up the scale slowly, blowing just hard enough for each note to speak cleanly, and watch where each one lands.

Which key is it in?

Cover the ten main finger and thumb holes, leave the two small subholes open, blow gently, and read the dial: that note names its key. On a 12-hole alto C it is C; with every hole covered, subholes too, it is the A below. If the reading is not a clean note at all, a hole is not fully sealed — on a 12-hole that is easily done, and it is worth ruling out before blaming the ocarina.

Squeaks, and an airy sound

High notes that squeak or go sharp almost always mean too much air: back off until the note only just speaks. If it is still sharp at the least air that will sound it, the instrument is sharp up there. A sound that turns fuzzy after a few minutes is usually condensation in the windway; cover the window with a finger and blow a short, firm breath to clear it. The ocarina tuner page explains the breath curve in full.

Step 2 Learn the layout

A note on an ocarina is not a hole you touch but a state of the whole instrument: which holes are open. The instrument above is a 12-hole alto C; tap a note and the drawing shows the fingering, or play it from your keyboard. Start with everything covered and uncover the holes one at a time, smallest first — the two subholes, then the fingers — and each one opened is a step up the scale. On the way up the natural notes, nothing is ever covered again.

What matters is how much hole is open, not which one: a small hole and a large hole can make the same note. That is why the chart sometimes gives a choice, and why a hole only half sealed by a finger gives a note somewhere between two.

The full instrument, with every size and key, is on the online ocarina page.

Step 3 Your first five songs

Easiest first: the library marks each tune easy or harder, and within that the songs covering the fewest notes come first — on an ocarina, range decides more about how hard a tune is than speed does. Every one is a public-domain melody.

Every ocarina song · Christmas songs for ocarina

Step 4 A seven-day plan

Ten minutes a day is enough, and the same ten minutes every day does more than an hour on Sunday. Tick each task as you go; this page remembers where you got to.

Sizes and types of ocarina

The common modern ocarina is the 12-hole alto C, with a range of an octave and a sixth, and it is the one every fingering on this site draws. A 10-hole ocarina has no subholes, so all holes covered is its C. Sopranos and basses play the same fingerings an octave higher or lower, and other keys — G, F — are made too. Small pendant ocarinas with four or six holes worn on a cord use a different fingering system altogether, so a 12-hole chart will not fit them.

The ocarina tuner has the full range for each type, and the online ocarina page has the fingering for every note.