Last updated: May 2010
There are two types of ocarina found in Britain. By far the commonest is the "Langley" ocarina, a design invented by an English schoolteacher in the 1960s which is often sold as "Celtic" or "Native American" with decorative motifs to match. It's a round instrument with two thumbholes underneath and four (or sometimes six) fingerholes on top. With misplaced ingenuity this makes the fewest holes possible do the most work; the holes vary a lot in size, and the larger ones make a difference of more than a tone to the pitch you get. So the fingering pattern is rather like the coding of binary numbers, and nothing like any other woodwind instrument. Accordingly, if you're coming to the ocarina from another woodwind or expect to play another one after learning the ocarina, this type of instrument is a mistake. It has its own repertoire (mainly music for children) but is next to useless as a general-purpose melodic instrument (You may also come across real Native American ocarinas in curio shops - these are not usually designed to play a Western scale and no two of them seem to be tuned the same way).
Much less common in the UK these days, but more musically useful, is the Italian type invented by Giuseppe Donati of Budrio in 1853. These are shaped like an airship, with two thumbholes underneath and eight fingerholes on top. These are fingered much more like a conventional tubular woodwind instrument - as you take fingers off in a sequence from little finger to thumb, right hand then left, the pitch goes upward almost in a conventional scale (the exceptions are to help you hold it: you want a thumb underneath and a finger to balance it as much as possible). Until the 1960s, these were fairly common in Britain, sold at the same price range as mouth organs. They also caught on in Moldavia and in places in Bulgaria; Romania probably made more of them than any country outside Italy and still does make them. A similar instrument, the borrindo, is played in north-west India and Pakistan, but I've never seen one - like some Chinese types, it has no windway, just an open tonehole like a flute. I have tried an instrument of this type and found it very difficult to get more than the lowest notes - I don't know where mine came from.
Here are some pictures of Donati-type instruments:
The image is from an educational poster published by David and Christa Liggins of the Ocarina Workshop http://www.ocarina.co.uk/ and is used here with their permission (copyright 1995).
Note the tuning slides on some of the instruments. Here is a picture of an EBay auction of one with the tuning slide pulled out; it also has two thumb-operated keys for extra high notes. It didn't sell because of a fantastically high reserve.
Here are two of my ocarinas, a ceramic one in C sharp (or rather, in C at a pitch around A=460) made in Vienna, and a B flat metal one from Paris, in top and bottom views:
And here is another ocarina, which the owner is putting on EBay UK as I write this (item 3758795631). It seems to be basically the same design as my metal one but in G and with a ring for a lanyard:
Something I have not found a picture of is a Compton Cube, which is an extreme bass ocarina used for the lowest octave of very large pipe organs. The idea was that in that range you would never need to play more than one note at a time, so it saved space not to use the usual set of single-pitch pipes. No human lungs could ever play one.
The ocarina is, acoustically, based on the principle of the Helmholtz resonator; this means that the pitch varies with the volume of the instrument and the cross-sectional area of holes open. Exactly which holes are open doesn't make any difference to the pitch you get, so long as the open area is the same.
Following the Fiehn company's convention, I've named the key of an ocarina as the note you get with all fingers and both thumbs down. Seven-fingers-down is the convention used for recorders; whistles have their pitch named after the six-finger note, a tone higher, so a C ocarina plays much like a C recorder or D whistle.
Here are some suggested fingerings for an ocarina in C, using cross-fingerings for chromatic notes. The note names use ABC conventions, so ^F is F sharp and _B is B flat. Ocarinas are not all the same, and most notes can be bent a lot by varying breath pressure, so you may want to use different fingerings than these. Ocarinas vary most and are most pressure-sensitive at the top end of the range. For some, the top two notes are so out of tune as to be useless.
left right
==== =====
C do T1234 T1234
D re T1234 T123-
E mi T1234 T12--
F fa T1234 T1---
^F fe T1234 T--3-
G sol T1234 T----
^G se T12-4 T1---
A la T12-4 T----
_B le T1--4 T1---
B si T1--4 T----
c do T---4 T----
^c do ----4 T1---
d re ----4 T----
_e ----- T----
e mi ----- -----
The rationale is to balance the instrument between left little finger and right thumb for as long as possible. Getting the top note without dropping the thing is tricky. (Another problem I have with the small B flat one is getting my moustache mixed up with my fingers, as the left-hand fingerholes are very close to the lips).
You can get other semitones by cross-fingering.
The sound of the ocarina is ear-catchingly weird. Highland pipe tunes work well on it if transposed; for those that omit the low G, you have a choice of two keys to play them in, as you can use either the ten-finger or nine-finger note to correspond to the chanter's A. "A" as a nine-finger note will usually feel more intuitive, since more fingerings will match those of the chanter. The G ocarina will let you play these tunes at the pitches normally used in folk sessions (the way fiddlers and accordionists do them)..
Some players to look out for: the Italian Idalgo Ferri, who plays an amazing range of Continental light music with incredible speed, and Sara Jackson, who plays British folk music in interesting and expressive arrangements with other instruments.
While they're often sold as children's instruments, I wouldn't recommend an ocarina as a first instrument for anybody unless they've already developed a good ear for pitch. It's far too pressure-sensitive.
For more information, there is a good article on ocarinas in the New Grove Encyclopaedia; the author of that article has written a book about them. There are a few other pages on the web:
Some quotes:
If you've got one of these lying about unplayed, please get in touch with me, I may want to buy it. But first find out what pitch it is - if you don't read music, use my note reference page for the note with both thumbs and all fingers down.
Italian-type ocarinas show up on EBay every week, more often in the US than the UK. The commonest types you see there are the pottery models made by H. Fiehn or EWA in Vienna before WW1, and American-made bakelite ones, some of which were produced in standard sizes to equip ocarina quartets in the US military during WW2. Here is the cover of a collection of music published for military ocarina groups:
If there are any veterans of the US military reading this who played in such a group when on active service, I'd like to hear from you.
I have a few Fiehn/EWA models but haven't tried one of the US military types. When buying from EBay, you want to check the range as well as the pitch - it's not a disaster if the top note or two is unplayable, but it may affect what you pay for it. Tunable ones can be very expensive. As a general rule, the more worn and scruffy the instrument is, the better it is - that shows it's been used intensively.
Or you can buy a new one made to a high standard from:
Sara Jackson The Ocarina Company Crosshill Grinley on the Hill Doncaster DN10 4RE England
Or from Giorgio Pacchioli in Italy, who has an excellent site in Italian: http://www.giorgiopacchioni.com/ocarina/. His designs include every conceivable size and double ocarinas that play like a double-chanter bagpipe. He also has sound files and sheet music.
Charlie Hind in the US makes excellent wooden ocarinas, some in the classic Italian rounded shape and some of a more box-like shape which play in much the same way. His site is http://www.hindocarina.com.
Ocarinas of the box-like shape are also made by Mountain Ocarinas in the US. The site has some attractive sound samples, mostly Irish and Scottish music played in an Irish-whistle style.
I now have one of the plastic Mountain Ocarinas. It sounds fine and plays accurately in tune, with one less note at the top of the range than a normal Italian ocarina, since the left hand little finger isn't used (this doesn't matter much). But it's harder to hold than an Italian ocarina of the usual shape, and the functions of the two thumbs have been interchanged - going up, the right thumb comes off before the left one. This is confusing if you're also playing ocarinas of the normal design, and for that matter if you also play most other woodwinds - it's usual in woodwind instruments for the left thumb to see more use than the right. (Charlie Hind's original design has the thumbs the right way round).
Cheaper ones (some smooth-finished and glazed in bright colours, others looking like dog turds decorated with cake icing) are made in Bulgaria and sold through EBay shops. There is also a moulded plastic one made in China, similar to the WW2 American models, which is mainly sold in Australia.
An odd type of multi-chamber ocarina is the huaca, composed for by Alan Tower. They look wonderful; I'm not convinced about Tower's music by the sample on the site.
Here are two pictures of me playing the ocarina at the Selkirk Sessions festival in 2006. Both photos are by Ian Oliver, LRPS.
A question: some time in late 2006, BBC Radio 3's "Late Junction" programme played some Kurdish ocarina music. I haven't found any more about it, and Late Junction isn't answering emails. Googling for the obvious keywords gets no useful hits, and a bizarre one where a Greek government site invented a Kurdish activist called Abdullah Ocarina by applying the Microsoft Word spellchecker to a document about Abdullah Öcalan. If anybody out there knows more, and in particular where to get that recording, please let me know.