I was visiting with an old friend recently, and he was playing on one of those English-system ocarina pendants. I really liked the sound of it. Now I have a couple of the inexpensive South American import ocarinas that have a fingering roughly like a flute, and a plastic sweet potato, but would be interested if anyone knows where I could get one of the small 4 or 6 hole ceramic English ocarinas, on an extremely limited budget. I found Songstones at Elderly for $12, but they require a credit card, and I don’t use a credit card.
Hi Waldo,
You can get them from Hobgoblin, and Susato make them too. The suasto ones are really nicely in tune, but of course plastic rather than pottery.
You might try Susato. I got a plastic one for my daughter for less than $5. The sound’s not as good as the wooden ones, but it plays a reasonable scale.
I got a cute little glazed clay one at a renaissance faire for 20 bucks, plays in Eb, only one note sounds particularly funny to me and I can fix it by adjusting breath volume without too much problem.
IMHO, ocarinas are cute and have a wonderful sound but are very limited. You only get an octave + 1 and some of the fingerings get a tad awkward. They’re nice to mess around with though. There’s a link to an ocarina site on the link page, which has links to more ocarina sites. All else fails, try google.
http://www.clayz.com/minis.html is here in Seattle. I got one of their plastic “Bearpaw” models via mailorder when I was in Boise but I didn’t much care for the sound. But the ones in the link above are ceramic.
I’ll probably end up getting a ceramic one the next time I’m downtown, as I have a tendency to do things like that.
Susato also sells a tunebook of one-octave tunes for ocarina.
Hi Walden
I’ve known Sandi and Richard Of Clayz.com for many years now. They have a message board for Ocarina makers and players that is “the bee’s knees!”. You can get OODLES of info about Ocarinas at…
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ocarinaclub/messages/
You will have to join to post though(its free). Tell um I sent ya!
You could try England?
I am english and know where to get nice ceramic Ocinaras.(Manchester actually) Not too sure how much they are but I know they are not expensive.
woodhouse.uk@lineone.net if you want more info from me
Jetboy
I beg to differ. My 10-hole Ti Amo ranges nearly two octaves, fully chromatic. The fingering isn’t awkward at all - the chromatics do not require half-holing like on a whistle, yet you can still bend notes. That doesn’t sound at all limiting to me.
Telegram Sam, I wonder if yours is from the same person who made mine and travels renfaires a lot.
I never heard of a ten hole Ocarina. I would like to know more.
Fine raymond. Let me clarify: The 5-hole ocarina is a bit limited. You can do accidentals on it if you half-hole or do some funny fingerings, but you still only get 1 octave.
This site has a link to an MP3 of a classical Ocarana ensemble.
http://www.ocarina.it/
Scroll down the lower right frame.
HMT has ocarinas. www.musicaltraditions.com
Waldon you might give e bay a look. I’ve seen quite a few different kinds from different places there.
Yes there are a few on eBay, of the sort I am looking for, at a good price. I’ve always played the South American type, with the fingering similar to whistle, and there’re a lot of those. And, I have a plastic sweet potato, which is the classical form. They have a lot of the South American ones on eBay, and sweet potatoes. But I’ll probably order an English-system ceramic or clay mini one (which is what I’m looking for) through eBay.
Here are the Hind, complete with fingering.
Never had a chance to try these, but they say they’re chromatic, and the scales are interesting.
NB: from what I gather, Hind ocarinas is a misleading name: they are not Hooligan pipes, and remain mouth-blown.
