Donati would continue on to open up his own ocarina workshop and begin producing these instruments profes- sionally, but it was his innovations that set him apart from previous European makers. He was the first to succeed in making ocarinas with a full octave or more in their range. The holes were not of the uniform size, and one hole in particular would have about half of the area of the rest, allowing for half-notes to be played easily.
This model allowed for ocarinas with one and a half octaves of range, with the key determined by the size of the instrument body. Incredibly, the Gruppo is still in existence to this day and remains a world famous ocarina group. The Gruppo has been playing now for over years, making it one of the longest standing musical groups in history.
The ocarina spread continuously throughout Europe, and soon the 4-hole English pendant ocarina was invented. This smaller variation actually has six holes in all, but only four on the top, with the two thumb holes on the bottom. The holes in the pendant style ocarina are all of different sizes, and this allows different notes to be created, achieving a far greater playing range than expected. In fact, a well- made pendant ocarina can have nearly the same playing range as the sweet potato model, using four holes fewer.
The popularity of these instruments continued to increase all the way up to the second World War, during which American servicemen were sometimes issued plastic ocarinas as a way to temper boredom Campin. This resulted in military quartets of ocarina players, which soon became quite popular. After the war, however, demand for the ocarina dwindled and it faded from cultural significance in the United States and, to a lesser degree, in Europe, too.
The success of the Zelda video games led to the mass production of cheap, plastic, Zelda-themed ocarinas with poor sound quality and poor construction.
However, at the same time, the ocarina was also beginning to enter or re-enter, looking back at the long history of the Gruppo the world of professional musicians, and variations of extremely high quality were being produced with multiple chambers, allowed for several octaves of playing range in a single instrument. In , the St. Louis Ocarina company formed with the aim of producing such professional quality ocarinas and promoting the inclusion of oca- rinas in symphony orchestras.
They have largely been successful, with musicians playing their instruments under such conductors as Pierre Boulez and Michael Tilson Thomas and in performances with the New World Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, including a number of solo pieces Scott. The St. Louis Ocarina company itself Scott. It now remains to examine the physics underlying the ocarina. At its heart, the ocarina is a Helmholtz resonator.
It is, fundamentally, a hollow chamber connected to a neck. In theory it could be filled with any compressible fluid such as air. The vibration that results is, with a constant input, harmonic, and can produce a pure, musical tone. This is what is happening when one blows across the top of an empty soda bottle, for instance. The frequency of the vibration produced by this system is articulated by the following equation,. Essentially, this means that as V, the vol- ume of the main chamber, becomes larger, the frequency will become smaller, producing a lower note.
As the value of A, the cross sectional area of the neck, becomes larger, the frequency will become larger, producing a higher note. In other words, a bigger bottle will make a deeper sound, and so will a smaller bottleneck. In the case of the ocarina, a larger body will produce lower notes, since the body of the ocarina corresponds to the main chamber of the Helmholtz resonator.
The fingering holes correspond to the value of A, so uncovering more holes effectively increases the value of A and produces a higher note. The frequency generated by the Helmholtz resonator, as can be seen from the equation above, is unrelated to the shape of the main chamber; only the volume, V, is germane. This holds true for the ocarina as well: the shape of the instrument does not have a significant effect on the frequency of the notes produced, and it is this which allows for the very sculptural ocarina models which have been crafted for thousands of years.
Notably, this is very different from other wind instruments, such as the flute, where the length of the pipe effects the frequency and so the shape of the instrument is extremely relevant to the sound it produces. Further, the relationship between the value of A and the note produced is also unrelated to the shape or location of the holes, only the area.
While the number of holes an ocarina can accommodate is ulti- mately limited by the number of fingers a player has usually ten, one must assume, although many single-chamber ocarinas have twelve holes, four of which exist in pairs that must be covered simultaneously by the same finger , no such limitation, in theory, exists on the size of the ocarina body. The tiniest ocarinas are smaller than a shot glass, and the largest ocarina to date is one produced by the St. This instrument is over 38 inches long, weighs 28 pounds, and has an internal volume of 42 gallons.
Its lowest note is a C2, two octaves below middle C Scott. The ocarina may be a Helmholtz resonator, but any such system must have an input force to produce a constant vibration.
Soda bottles do not whistle of their own accord. With the ocarina, this input force is produced by an edge-tone vibration. If the most commonly experienced Helmholtz resonator is the soda bottle, an example of the equivalently ubiquitous edge-tone must be found in blowing across the edge of a sheet of paper or blade of grass to produce a high, screeching whistle.
The neck of the ocarina into which the musician initially blows directs air across a fipple, essentially a sharply defined edge. The use of an edge-tone to stimulate the Helmholtz resonance of an ocarina has an interesting side-effect on the way in which ocarina music is played.
The frequency of a note generated by an edge-tone relates to the velocity of the air being pushed across the edge. Some adults make fine borrindos of larger size, put pottery designs on them, and bake them.
These baked borrindos, with pottery designs, are the later evolved forms of this musical instrument, which appears to have previously been used in its simple unbaked form for a long time.
Ultimate Pop Culture Wiki Explore. Wiki Content. Recently Changed Pages Syfy S. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Edit source History Talk 0. This article is about the musical instrument. For the song, see Song of Ocarina. For the company, see Ocarina Networks. Sound of an Ocarina. This is a home-made six-hole English Pendant ocarina. Meissen "Blue Onion" pattern porcelain transverse ocarina, early 20th Century. Ocarina SopranoF AltoC.
Front and back view of transverse ocarinas. The double holes on front indicate a fingering system developed in 20th Century Japan. Ocarina 2. The English pendant ocarina, invented in the s by John Taylor, produces an entire octave using just four finger holes. English pendant ocarina unstrung, with two suspension holes. Ocarina a doppia voce americana. Ocarina doppia di Kurt Posch. A double-chambered transverse ocarina mouthpiece on the side.
An Asian double chambered ocarina. The two blow holes in the mouthpiece are clearly visible, which makes it possible for the player to play an extended range of notes 17 in total, in this case from A4 to C6.
STL Triple Bass. A triple-chambered ocarina in the bass register. Paolo collection. STL Teacarina ocarina. Selection of novelty "teacarinas" that are also functional teacups. Ocarina shops. EpiCai Glass Bottle ocarina. Pre-Columbian ceramic ocarina. A ceramic pre-Columbian ocarina, ca. Each ocarina has its own story to tell , whether made from porcelain, metal, plastic or clay. What does a 2, year old Ocarina sound like? Find out here:. PreColumbian 2-hole Ceramic Shell. PreColumbian 4-hole Ceramic Animal.
PreColumbian 4-hole Ceramic Bird.
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