What is an ocarina?

Updated 2026-10-28

An ocarina is a small wind instrument with a closed, hollow body, a mouthpiece and finger holes. You blow into the mouthpiece and cover holes to choose the note, as on a recorder, but the body is a round vessel rather than a tube, so musicians class it as a vessel flute. Most are ceramic and some are plastic. Of the kinds held sideways, the 12-hole is the most widely available today; smaller pendants with 4 or 6 holes can hang on a cord.

How does an ocarina make its sound?

Air goes in through a narrow windway and strikes a sharp edge, the labium, and the whole hollow body resonates at one pitch. Covering holes lowers that pitch and uncovering them raises it. Breath moves it too: Wikipedia's article puts it as "Blowing more softly lowers the pitch; blowing harder raises it", by up to several semitones. That is why an ocarina usually has no tuning mechanism and little range between soft and loud, and why playing one in tune is mostly a matter of giving each note the right breath.

Our guide to breath control covers how hard to blow on each note.

Where does the ocarina come from?

• Vessel flutes are among the oldest instruments: Wikipedia describes the family as "believed to date back over 12,000 years", with early forms in China, where a relative called the xun is still played, and in Mesoamerica.
• The ocarina as a tuned instrument is Italian. In 1853, 17-year-old Giuseppe Donati of Budrio, near Bologna, turned a toy that played a few notes into a full instrument and named it after the local word ucaréṅna, "little goose".
• Pendant ocarinas are British. In 1964 the mathematician John Taylor worked out a fingering that plays a full chromatic octave on four holes, the system pendants still use.
• The 12-hole came from Asia in the 20th century, Pure Ocarinas says, by adding two small sub-holes to the older 10-hole design.
• Video games brought the ocarina to a new generation: Wikipedia notes that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) has been credited with raising its popularity and sales, and Nintendo dated a remake for Switch 2 to 5 November 2026.

What are the types of ocarina?

Ocarinas differ in how you hold them, how many holes they have and how many chambers. The ranges below are for an ocarina in C of the usual size, as makers publish them, except where marked:

• Transverse ocarinas, the 10-hole and 12-hole, are the classic shape, and the one Pure Ocarinas recommends for learning melodies. Single and multichamber transverses share one fingering system, so a player can move up to a double later.
• Pendants trade range for size. Fewer holes look simpler, but Pure Ocarinas finds a pendant no easier to play well than any other ocarina, and warns that pendants are "often produced as novelty items and not properly tuned".
• Inline ocarinas let the hands sit straight, which Pure Ocarinas says may suit players with arthritis or RSI, but fewer makers build them.
• A multichamber ocarina is a transverse with one or more small extra ocarinas joined on, each with its own mouthpiece and finger holes, to reach higher notes. Pure Ocarinas notes that the exact fingerings differ from one maker to the next, so learn them from your maker's chart.
• Pure Ocarinas describes flat souvenir "Peruvian" ocarinas, with eight to ten holes all the same size, as not tuned, and says replicas of the Zelda game's ocarina vary enormously in quality. Our buying guide explains how to tell a playable one.

What sizes do ocarinas come in?

Ocarinas come in soprano, alto and bass sizes, an octave apart and all played with the same fingerings; the smaller the ocarina, the higher it plays. For a 12-hole in C:

Pure Ocarinas describes the sound of the two ends: "Bass ocarinas are dark and sombre in tone", while "Sopranos, on the other hand, are piercing and always take the lead in a mix." The middle size is the alto, which some makers, STL Ocarina among them, sell as a tenor. Our charts and tabs are written for the alto C.

What does the key of an ocarina mean?

An ocarina's key is the scale it plays with no cross-fingered notes: a C ocarina plays a C major scale and a G ocarina a G major scale, with the same fingerings. A tuned ocarina can still play sharps and flats, so the key is mostly about which notes are in reach: a 12-hole in G plays E4 to C6 or E5 to C7, depending on its size, against A4 to F6 for an alto C. Our fingering charts are written for C and work on any key.

How do you find out which ocarina you have?

Count the holes first. The table above tells the types apart. The key and size are harder to tell by eye. Our free tuner can find them by ear: choose "I don't know which one I have", say how many holes it has, then start the test and play the note it asks for, with the main holes covered. From that one note it names the ocarina, an alto C for example, or, if the key isn't one we list, tells you the key it heard and tests it in that key.

What are ocarinas made of?

Traditionally clay, fired into ceramic; today some are plastic. Wikipedia lists "plastic, wood, glass, metal, or bone" as other materials. Pure Ocarinas finds that the material changes an ocarina's sound far less than it changes a guitar's, because the body only contains the vibrating air; it matters more for durability, and a plastic ocarina can survive being dropped, though far fewer plastic models are made. Our buying guide compares them for a first ocarina, and our gift guide covers buying one for someone else. If you have just got one, our plan for the first week starts from holding it.