Tag Archives: instruments

Overview of the Ocarina: Instrument of the Ages

I wrote this article in 2009 for another website I was running at the time. In this article, I cover my experiences with the ocarina, the history of the ocarina, selecting (or making) an ocarina, and how to play an ocarina.

At a renaissance festival, a musician lured me with whimsical melodies using a strange whistle-like device. Enchanted, I hovered over to her stand, where I discovered that she and her sister made ocarinas for a living, to my great surprise, because, although I had played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I never knew such instruments actually existed. A diehard Zelda fan and a lover of music, I stood staring at the shiny ocarinas of all shapes and sizes on the counters. Read more