A simple, egg-shaped musical instrument belonging to the flute family, with a protruding mouthpiece, six fingerholes, and two thumbholes. It is made from terracotta, and is played by children, and also as a folk instrument.
History
The ocarina is a very old family of instruments, believed to date back some 12,000 years.
Its common use in the Western countries dates to the 19th century, when the modern form of the ocarina was invented by Italian Giuseppe Donati.
Attractively painted porcelain ocarinas have been produced, such as the Meissen ocarinas. The Meissen factory in Germany did not make the ocarina, but licensed local German ocarina-makers to use the Meissen blue and white onion pattern as the exterior design.
Classification
The ocarina is a vessel flute. Making
Musical performance
The ocarina, like other vessel flutes, has the unusual quality of not relying on the pipe length to produce a particular tone. This means that, unlike a flute or recorder, the placement of the holes on an ocarina is largely irrelevant—their size is the most important factor.
The resonator in the ocarina creates a sine-shaped sound wave and is thus incapable of creating harmonic overtones. This means that the technique of overblowing to get a range of higher pitched notes is not possible with the ocarina, so the range of pitches available is limited.
Types of ocarina
Multi-chambered ocarinas
Since the 19th century, many makers have produced double ocarinas able to play polyphonic pieces.
Ocarinas with keys
Ocarinas with keys have been produced by several makers, mostly experimentally, beginning in the late 19th century.
The Modern Ocarina
One of the most popular ocarina manufacturers in the United Kingdom is the Ocarina Workshop. The workshop produces circular ocarinas made from plastic and ceramics, and which use the four and six hole fingering system developed by John Taylor. They also produce two-chambered ocarinas the same number of notes as their standard ocarina, doubled. Other popular Ocarina Makers include CLAYZENESS Whistleworks(), Johann Rotter (), Sixth Street Pottery () and Songbird Ocarinas ().
Ocarina Tab
The ocarina makes use of a special form of tablature which represents the holes on the top of the ocarina, and, where necessary, the holes on the underside.
Ocarina in Budrio
Budrio, a town near Bologna, Italy, is the home of the first classical ocarinas. It keeps up its tradition in the form of the Fabio Menaglio ocarina workshops which produces a full range of professional instruments. Also Budrio has the best known classical ocarina group, known as the "Gruppo Ocarinistico Budriese" who record and perform (since 1865).
Appearance in works
In the late 1930s a group of older boys began building wooden ocarinas. They formed a popular ocarina ensemble called the Potato Bugs, performing on Broadway, radio, and later television, into the 1950s. The Sweet Potato Pipers, a 1930s-1940s ocarina group that toured with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, featured the ocarina, prominently on screen, in Hollywood musicals such as Girl Crazy (1943). A memorable part in the Bernardo Bertolucci movie 1900, set in the Emilia region of northern Italy during the early 20th century, features a scene in which a group of farmers in a forest play a tune in harmony on ocarinas of various sizes. An ocarina part also features prominently in the theme from the 1966 spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The ocarina, along with the Jew's harp and the electric guitar, was used widely in the soundtracks of 1960s European-made westerns, to develop a distinctive style. The instrumental break in The Troggs's 1966 hit song "Wild Thing" contains a lively ocarina solo played by group leader Reg Presley. The 1988 Japanese animated cartoon My Neighbor Totoro featured the ocarina prominently, and this film retains an association with the instrument in modern popular culture. An ocarina is seen briefly in the 1983 film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, when the sex educator confiscates a student's ocarina. Ocarinas experienced a slight surge in popularity in the last years of the 20th century due to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 1998. One of the most popular games for the Nintendo 64, it involved the hero Link using a magical ocarina to travel through time, change day to night and night to day, teleport all over the land of Hyrule, summon his horse, and other magical tasks. Shaped like an egg, it differs from the ocarina in being side-blown, like the Western concert flute, rather than having a recorder-like mouthpiece.A recent instrument, a derivative of the ocarina called a huaca, was invented by Sharon Rowell.
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