How to read ocarina tabs

What does an ocarina tab look like?

An ocarina tab is a row of small ocarina pictures, one for each note, with the note's letter underneath. Here is the first line of Mary Had a Little Lamb in our tabs. Switch to your hole count, press play, and follow the pictures while it sounds:

1. Find the first picture and cover the filled holes. It starts on E.
2. Blow gently and steadily, then change your fingers to match the next picture. Two of the same note in a row need a separate start, a light "tu" with your tongue.
3. When you reach a vertical line, carry on. It marks the end of a bar, a group of beats, and is not a pause.
4. Go slowly enough that every note sounds clean. Speed comes after the fingers know the way.

When tab pictures don't match your ocarina

Our pictures show the ocarina from above, with the holes in the positions on our how to hold diagrams. Tabs from another site or a songbook may draw it differently, so read that tab's key before you trust it. Sub-holes can be a mismatch on a 12-hole, because their position varies by layout, so go by the note name rather than where the small hole sits on the page. If a tab uses a note your ocarina doesn't have, our chart for your hole count shows what it can play.

Tabs written for a C ocarina still work on an ocarina in G or F, as our guide to ocarina notes explains. The fingers are the same. The letters under the pictures name what a C ocarina would sound, not what yours does.

What do ocarina tabs leave out?

Tabs show which holes to cover, and little else. Pure Ocarinas says: "They don't tell you about the rhythm, phrasing or note emphasis of a melody, leaving you to work them out by ear or from memory." That is the reason to hear a tune before you play it.

Our tabs carry a little of the rhythm. Bar lines group the beats, a note that lasts two beats or more gets a wider picture on a 12-hole, and "keep holding" under a picture means the note before it carries on. The folk songs have a Play button for the rest. The Zelda song pages have no audio, so those rhythms come from your memory of the game.

The same article points out a second gap, the belief that "if I am using the right fingering, I am playing the correct note". A tab can't show how hard to blow, and your breath moves the pitch. If you are following the pictures and a note still sounds wrong, see is my ocarina out of tune, or is it me?

How do you read sheet music on an ocarina?

Sheet music works like a graph, in Pure Ocarinas' description: height on the staff gives the note, and the shape of the note gives its length. Read it left to right, as with a tab. On a C ocarina, each height is one fingering. This is where the notes of the C major scale sit in the treble clef, the staff with the curly sign at its start:

Use the 12-hole, 6-hole or 4-hole chart for the fingering at each height. Pure Ocarinas suggests learning rhythms before pitches, because "A melody is a rhythm with a series of pitches played to it."

Should you learn sheet music or stay with tabs?

Stay with tabs while they get you playing songs you love; that is what they are good at. Pure Ocarinas argues for moving on, since "Only a tiny portion of the world's music will ever be transcribed into ocarina tabs." When the tune you want has no tab, learning to read a staff or to play by ear is what frees you from waiting for someone to write one. Neither has to happen in your first month.

A good way in is to play from a tab while looking at the note names, until you can say them without the pictures. Our easy songs are short enough to do this, and the full song list shows which hole counts each song fits.