Master the Scale and Learn to Play Your Ocarina Like a Pro
There's no way around it. If you want to get good at playing your ocarina, you need to learn the scale. Oh, you can get by with reading notes off of ocarina tabs. You can even learn some pretty cool songs that way. But if you want to be able to figure out songs on your own, the first step is mastering that scale. And to master the scale, you need to practice, practice, practice.
You need to be able to play the scale on your ocarina backwards and forwards, without looking at the tabs, and do it so often that your fingers fall into place without conscious thought. I've been playing ocarinas since 1999, and even after all this time, the first thing I do when I pick up an ocarina is play the scale.
Fortunately, it's pretty easy once you memorize the fingerings!
Here are the tabs for the basic chromatic scale on a pendant style, four to six hole ocarina:
To keep your ocarina in place when you reach the top notes, you might want to secure it with a ring finger down near the necklace hole. You can see me do it in the video below.
