Finding Music To Play

A part of learning a new instrument is to play music that interests you, but at your level so you don’t get discouraged when you can’t play it.

I started with a song I knew could be played on the Ocarina from one of my favorite childhood movies Lugia’s Song. Unfortunately since I am inexperienced with the ocarina I can’t hit the high notes like I’m supposed to so I decided to start with an easier song and managed to memorize the notes for the Star Wars Theme song.1abc79f92062d783386b19879d2ac6d8

This is only the main part of the theme song and took me at least ten tries to perfect. Playing the ocarina reminds me of playing the recorder in elementary school but I like the sound more.

I’ve also chosen some more difficult songs and have begun to work on playing small b0bd2c132243449d23131cf5df817fc6-skyrim-music-ocarina-sheet-music-holeparts. All of the music I have chosen is from either video games or movies because I can listen to the beat of the real song and manage to figure out how the melody would go on the ocarina. One of the more difficult songs I’ve chosen is the Skyrim Theme song which I’ve begun to understand the bottom half of the page.

The next few songs I want to try out are from the Legend of Zelda such as the Song of Storms and Saria’s Song and maybe Zelda’s Lullaby.

Where am I getting all of these songs? Well actually its this amazing site called Saint Louis Ocarina which has sheets available under Google images. They also sell both Ocarinas and books of sheet music for the Ocarina. The site was created in 2005 to revive the interest of playing the ocarina. The books for music are too expensive ranging from 5$-15$ at the most. The ocarinas they sell range from a price of 10$-130$ depending on the size (6 hole-24 hole) and the style you can choose. The styles of Ocarinas range by the shape and color as well as how many barrels the ocarina contains. For example the blue ocarina on the first page (the same one I currently own) is a single barrel ocarina. A double barrel ocarina looks yhst-46117395216933_2269_60169162

like this one which has an extra five holes that need to be covered. These ocarinas are for more advanced players.

Picking an ocarina is more about looks then anything. Did you want it made out of pottery, plastic, ceramic? Choose your material, your color and then choose if you are getting a pendent, necklace, 6-hole pocket, 12-hole regular or the double barrel ocarina. Picking out the music you want to play is the fun part as you can choose almost any medley that you grew up around. Songs from Lord of the Rings, video games, children’s lullabies, Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter. There are so many ideas online and so many songs that people have just figured out how to play. The ocarina is a great instrument to choose as a self taught instrument because it requires very little instruction.

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