Ocarinas United

Guy's, while I'm finishing the editing part of the interview, rather than have everyone wait, those at STL have agreed to post a statement regarding the recent claims made with their company.

If you wish to respond, please follow the POSTING RULES AND GUIDELINES to avoid any further disputes.

EDIT: If you have a question (and questions only), please carefully read through STL's statement, and then make your post. Failure to follow this rule may lead to deleted posts. Thanks.

Thanks to STL for agreeing to do this and to everyone for being so patient.

Hello everyone,

I am one of the members of STL Ocarina. A lot of questions have come up in recent weeks and I hope that I can answer them for you. We had a chance to talk with Docjazz just recently in an interview to address some of the concerns and questions, but we didn’t have time to get to all of your questions, I thought I’d post here too. In the past we have avoided posting on this site. We felt that as sellers, it would not be right for us to have a presence on Ocarina’s United because we feel that it’s really a community for ocarina players. However, because of the recent tension and disunity on the forum, Docjazz has invited us to post on the site to get the facts out there.

Here are a few questions that I’ve noticed really need to be answered.

Do we make any of our ocarinas?

No, we do not physically make them ourselves but we are involved in designing many of the ocarinas. All of us are trained professional musicians, so we share our musical expertise and artistic views with the makers in the making process. Many of the ocarina designs are made specifically and exclusively for us. In fact, we own the rights to those designs and have paid for them. Because of this, we are the sole authorized sellers of such ocarinas.

Some people have claimed that we have stated that we make the instruments personally. In one instance, an email supposedly from us was posted that stated that we make the ocarinas here in the US. The offending line was added to that email by someone else because we did not write it and we would have no reason for doing so. We have never claimed that we personally make the ocarinas nor will we ever claim to do so. If any statement out there by us has given anyone the impression that we personally make the ocarinas, it certainly was not intended to give that impression.

What is your affiliation with TNG?

Some of our ocarinas are made by TNG ocarinas and we have REALLY enjoyed working with the maker. We’ve had the opportunity to offer design ideas and suggestions for improvements and he has been simply wonderful throughout the whole process.

Why do you claim that TNG is not a Chinese company when tngocarinas.com shows clearly that it is a Chinese company?

We just found out about this website recently and were quite upset because the company that runs that website is NOT actually the TNG company. Although they bought the domain name, they are not a part of the company. In fact, they have stolen the double ocarina pictures from our website. They are a Chinese company who buy from the TNG maker and are selling the TNG ocarinas in China. We spoke with the TNG maker and he assured us that the website is not run by his company and he is currently trying to rectify the situation. The maker of the TNG ocarinas makes all of his ocarinas at his factory in Taiwan and we have personally been there, so we know that this is the truth.

The Chinese company’s attempt to sell TNG ocarinas in America on their website is a gross violation of our rights as we are the only authorized sellers of TNG ocarinas in the United States. For us this has all been very frustrating because everyone is jumping to conclusions on faulty information. As far as I would guess, no one here is fluent in speaking or reading Chinese. Some of us here at STL Ocarina are fluent in speaking and reading Chinese, so it’s easier for us to understand what’s going on, plus we personally know the maker of the TNG ocarinas. For example, did any of you know that WPN are the initials of the maker and TNG are the initials of his company?

Why do you say that your ocarinas are not from China if Taiwan is officially a part of China?

This is a political question that I won’t go into too deeply since many people feel strongly about the issue on both sides. As a company, we will not take political sides. However, since Kissing posted the false information about the source of our ocarinas, many people believed him and were concerned about the safety of our instruments because of recent recalls of Chinese products. We were suddenly swamped with emails about the safety of our ocarinas which cost our company a tremendous amount of time and resources. Plus, I’m sure we lost many potential customers due to some of the claims that our ocarinas are Chinese. We felt that it was important to address the issue in our blog since our ocarinas are safe.

Why don’t you respond to emails more often?

We truly wish that we could respond to every single email right away, and we do seriously try to do so. However, between our music teaching, development of new educational materials, practicing, recording projects, and design work with the makers, we are SOOO busy. All of us have made great personal sacrifice at the company because we truly believe in what we are doing. We’re trying to do something good for the world by getting more music out there to unite people. Many times we do not finish our work until 1 or 2am after having worked all day. We’re happy to do this because we honestly want to introduce the ocarina to more people, but it has definitely not been easy.

On a personal note, there are a few things that I feel I must say. It greatly saddens me to see something as beautifully harmonious and unifying as music be turned into such a source of discord. . I got into ocarinas because I was tired of the ugliness and politics that goes on in the world of professional music and I wanted no part of it. I wanted to find the fun in music again. I love Docjazz’s vision of Ocarinas UNITED being a place to bring people together to share music. I’m especially sad that after all that he has done for the ocarina, people are saying unkind things about Docjazz. Some deeply hurtful claims were also made about us that people who know us personally know to be so far from the truth. Some people think that it’s no big deal and that we’re probably some big unfeeling corporation, but the truth is that we have feelings and are terribly hurt by the unfair accusations of dishonesty.

Whether or not you like STL Ocarina, I sincerely hope that a spirit of kindness and fun can return to this forum. That’s what music is supposed to be all about.

Im glad that we are getting to hear from STL and getting this cleared up.
I am also in favour of ocarinas UNITED.

Thank god you came in here and cleared up this mess.

I would have never thought that TNGocarina.com was a stolen name

Ive heard some people say that Docjazz is working for you guys at STL. Would you care to elaborate on this?

Everyone, please keep your posts to questions only to make it as easy as possible to get answers back and to avoid arguments. Thanks.

Ocarinar wrote:Ive heard some people say that Docjazz is working for you guys at STL. Would you care to elaborate on this?

Docjazz does not work for STL. When he became featured on their webstie, he didn't even know. I remember reading the thread when it happened. He was featured because of his obvious talent and because it we clearly using the ocarinas sold at STL.


To STL, thank you for clearing up this matter. I assumed that TNGocarinas.com was the real manufacturer of the ocarinas. I'm sure you know what happens when you assume.

reev, please follow what doc asks and please only keep posts questions only.

and about his vids on their website. doc knew, he was asked by them if they can put them up.

reev0 wrote:Docjazz does not work for STL. When he became featured on their webstie, he didn't even know. I remember reading the thread when it happened. He was featured because of his obvious talent and because it we clearly using the ocarinas sold at STL.

Yes, I did know they were going to use my videos because they emailed me to get permission to use them. The reason I reacted the way I did in my post at the time is because I was not expecting them to do it so quickly and I was trying to be humble about it, instead of "HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT!!!", lol.

Again, please keep posts to questions only. Thanks.

I have a question for STL Ocarina:

Would you consider specifying for each Ocarina who has made it, or where it's made?

For example those really pretty Ocarinas from the "Star Series" it only says they're made from US clay but it doesn't say which artist made them or anything like that.

They look very nice but I'd like to know more about them because they're unique and quite pricey.

All other Ocarina sellers on the web actually pride themselves on who made their Ocarinas and they're happy to share that information.

TNG Ocarinas are great, and I too own one that I bought from you guys, I love it!

It's just, you speak about the maker of TNG Ocarinas (we know now his initials are WPN ) but don't say anything about him and his worksho/factory. Maybe you could, with his consent of course, create a little "about the makers" page or something like that? Also include the makers of all the other Ocarinas.

It does really add to the content of a website, it's informative, persuades indecisive customers and it will definitely prevent anything like this from happening again.

That way you can also assure people easier that there is no lead in the glazing or anything else health related.

I just think it would be very useful.

I appologize if this is not the correct place for this, but since it is the only STL related thread, here it is.

In the Ocarina descriptions could you please include the main color of the ocarina? I had a bit of confusion on whether the following ocarina was a really dark blue, or black.

http://stlocarina.com/wz1bdis.html

I was told by someone who owned one that is was black, so it's all okay now, but it did cause quite a bit of confusion and frustration for me.