Ocarinas United

For some songs I have to play a 5, or a C^ I believe, and it usually sounds windy, unless I blow a little harder.

Is there anyway I can make it sound good without it being ear piercing loud? Lol...

Btw, this is my ocarina: http://stlocarina.com/g4.html

Also, what does the ^ in C^ even stand for? I just wrote down the letter notes beside the STL numbers, I'm not quite sure what they mean but I believe the # means sharp and the ^ means really sharp or double sharp? I don't know.

all i know is that higher notes takes more and harder breath

Zack wrote:For some songs I have to play a 5, or a C^ I believe, and it usually sounds windy, unless I blow a little harder.

Is there anyway I can make it sound good without it being ear piercing loud? Lol...

Btw, this is my ocarina: http://stlocarina.com/g4.html

Also, what does the ^ in C^ even stand for? I just wrote down the letter notes beside the STL numbers, I'm not quite sure what they mean but I believe the # means sharp and the ^ means really sharp or double sharp? I don't know.

C^ would be high C. ^^

The sound example on that was terrible. I feel for you, dude

ive had this same problem and i think i have a quickfix: when you whistle you use muscles in your throat in order to make high or low sounds in conjunction with your lips. when playing those high notes i experimented and found that if you expand your throat like if you were whistling low or wanted to make your voice sound lower whilst blowing it does take some windiness out without detracting from the sound.

tuneofwind wrote:all i know is that higher notes takes more and harder breath

unitl i get my new ocarina im stuck with this plastic one but it has a crack on th eend well anyway ive noticed that i need less breath to play the high notes is this just becoz of the crack or isit the diff sorts of ocarinas (its a 10 hole tranverse)

That particular model is known to have that problem.
You can compensate a lot with breathing techniques, but it will not go away completely.

Hmm not having an ocarina of my own yet (sobs) I cant directly relate, but back in the day I played the flute, and for low notes you had to use braethy warm air from your stomach, you had to blow like you were trying to fog up a window and make that HUUUUHHHH sound. For those reallllly high notes, they had the exact same fingering you just had to blow them higher, i think its called over blowing? But you press your lips tight and blow a focused stream of air. Hope that helps

the sheet of paper that i received from maparam said that while sitting down playing the ocarina you should bend forward a little bit to have the top notes work better.

you should probably try the acute bend, docjazz has a video on youtube and there is a thread somewhere on it

The ocarinas from STL are among the most overrated ocarinas on the web. They look pretty, and... that's it. The sound quality is extremely variable for each ocarina so... I don't know what to tell you, really. You can try the acute bend like others are saying. It doesn't work for my WPN tenor at all.

As I belive someone may have said already, If your are standing with whilst playing, lean either your head, the orarina or both down to the floor and blow just a little harder. If you are sitting, lean forward or bend you hands so the top of the ocarina is facing more to the ground, though not so mauch that you cant paly it ^^
It will take some practise to find the right style for your ocarina, seeing as how all of them are different in some small way.
Hope it helps ^^

Oh, and no matter what you do , the high notes will always be ouder that the others.