The Complete Handbook of Ocarinas

Chapter 1: Understanding Ocarinas

An ocarina is, at its simplest, a vessel flute. Unlike a flute or a recorder, where the player's breath travels through a tube and the pitch is determined largely by the length of that tube and where the holes are placed, an ocarina produces sound from a fixed, enclosed cavity. You, the player, are not varying the length of the air column in the conventional sense. Instead, you are varying the rate at which air escapes from a sealed chamber, and that rate is controlled by uncovering holes of various sizes. This is a fundamental distinction that drives every practical aspect of the instrument, from how it is made to how you play it.

To understand why this matters, consider the physics. When you blow into an ocarina, the air stream passes through a narrow slot called the windway. It then strikes a sharp edge, called the fipple or the labium, which splits the air and sets the air inside the chamber vibrating. The chamber is a fixed volume. The air inside it has a natural resonant frequency, just as a bottle filled with air will resonate when you blow across its mouth. The ocarina's voicing - the combination of the windway and the fipple - excites that resonance. The frequency of the vibration is determined by the volume of air in the chamber and the total area of the openings through which that air can escape. When you cover all the fingerholes, the only opening