I absolutely adore the ocarina, ever since I first played a virtual one in the The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I love its haunting, melancholy sound, its compact yet elegant shape, the expressiveness of its vibrato and its wonderful ability to pitch bend. A simple yet truly unique instrument with ancient roots that deserves more love than it gets. These days I play the ocarina more than any other instrument – I always leave one out in the living room, as it’s so easy to just pick up and play a little tune.

Where it all started for me…

…although the original Link’s Awakening featured Link playing an ocarina back in 1993

In fact, Link has been playing the ocarina since 1991 (20 years longer than I have!)
I’ve actually been playing since 2011 (14 years!), although I was quite desperate to track one down when I was growing up. If my family could have afforded it, I would have bought one way back in 1998 – I distinctly remember seeing one advertised in the back pages of Nintendo Official Magazine while I was drooling over screenshots of that recently released Zelda masterpiece. At something like £40 plus shipping, it cost almost as much as the game itself! So it was a very long wait before I finally tracked one down and imported it from Korea in April 2011 – a whole 12 years after I first played OoT in 1999.

My first ocarina, purchased in 2011, enthusiastically photographed in 2020.
Anyway, a quarter of a century (!!) after I first fell in love, I have a sizable collection of the things, which has grown and shrunk over time. This cheeky Zelda tribute image was cobbled together in September 2020, as COVID revived my dormant love of the instrument, and soon led to a… not insignificant number of new purchases.
I’m posting this now as I’ve been playing the ocarina more and more of late. Last week I happened to find myself at a comic artists’ social with an ocarina in my bag, and circumstances conspired to lead me into my first ever public performance on the thing. We unexpectedly discovered that it was the birthday of one of our new members, and of course I couldn’t resist playing a cheeky happy birthday. After that, a number of Zelda requests came tumbling forth from an enthusiastic audience of geeks and nerds. I definitely need to tighten up my repertoire for next time! (Video courtesy of Dan Byron)
“Play the song that makes me young again!” – Dan Byron
I should like to play it more still, and perhaps share some of my playing with you lovely folks.
In case you’re wondering, the ocarinas included in this post:
- Light Blue Focalink Alto C
- Wine red Noble Alto C from Korea (they don’t make this colour any more!)
- Purple Clay Soprano C, possibly by TNG. This one’s a bit of a mystery. I bought it on eBay about a decade ago, but I ‘ve never seen one like it before or since.
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