How to Make an Ocarina with Your Hands

Whistling With Your Hands

Put your hands out in front of you. Hold your hands apart with your fingertips pointing towards the ceiling and your palms facing each other. Your thumbs should be pointing up as well. Essentially, it should look like you were just praying, then took your hands apart from each other.

Bring your palms together as you turn your left hand. Move your hands toward each other as if clapping. As you do so, turn your left hand so that your fingers are pointing forward (rather than up at the ceiling). When your hands touch, the heel of your left hand (the firm part below the palm) should be against the fleshy part of your right thumb. These directions assume you're right-handed. If you're a leftie, it may be easier to reverse the references to the hands in this step as well as the following hands (i.e., turn your right hand in this step, etc.)

Wrap your hands around each other. Now, bend your fingers so that each hand is holding the other. The fingers of your right hand should curl in the space between your left thumb and index finger. The fingers of your left hand should curl around the side of your right pinkie (little finger).

Line up your thumbs. Without taking your hands apart, adjust your thumbs so that the insides of both knuckles touch each other. Your thumbnails should be aligned next to your right index finger. There should now be a thin gap between your thumbs just a few millimeters wide. This is the sound hole — it's where you're blow air into the ocarina and also where the whistling noise will come out.

Put your lips up to your knuckles. Part your lips slightly (as if to say "Oooh"). Place your lips so that the small "o" formed between them lines up just below your knuckles. In other words, your top lip should rest against your thumbs' knuckles and your bottom lip should be over the top half of the slit between your thumbs.

Blow. Blow a steady stream of air into the very top part of the slit between your thumbs. In other words, you want to blow right below your thumbs' knuckles. You should hear a whistle that sounds a little like a hooting owl or a wooden train whistle if you did it right. Do not vocalize in an attempt to make the bird call with your vocal cords (i.e., saying "ooh" or "ahh" as you blow). Blow noiselessly as if trying to get an empty bottle to whistle.

Make minor adjustments until you can whistle consistently. It can be pretty difficult to get your hand ocarina to work, especially if this is your first time. If you're just getting the dry, pitch-less sound of rushing air, you're probably making one of a few common mistakes. See below: The "seal" around your ocarina may not be tight enough. Try adjusting the shape of your hands to close gaps around the edges. You don't have to squeeze tight — just make sure you aren't letting any air out. The noise hole may not be quite the right shape. Try moving your thumbs closer together to make the hole a little narrower. You may not be blowing in the right place. Try moving your lips up and down slightly or widening the "o" formed by your lips. Remember, you want to blow into the top half of the slit between your thumbs.

Making Different Pitches

Try lifting your right hand fingers. Letting air out of your ocarina through points other than the sound hole will affect the pitch of the whistle. A controlled way to do this is to lift the four fingers on your right hand up and down, mimicking the motions a flute player would make. Lift a maximum of two fingers at once — the more ways there are for air to escape, the harder it is to get pitches. Note that this is difficult to do without causing your whistle to turn into an undesirable "rushing air" noise. You'll need to keep a good seal between your hands, lift your finger only slightly, and support the note with plenty of air. It can take as long to learn how to do this as it takes to learn how to make the whistle in the first place.

Try changing the space between your hands. The pitch you hear when you get a whistle out of a hand ocarina is the air between your hands vibrating. Creating a bigger or smaller space by changing the shape of your hands will let more or less air in, affecting the pitch. Just be careful to keep a tight seal between your hands so air can't leak out. Making a bigger space (moving your hands apart) will produce a lower-pitched sound. Making a smaller space (moving your hands together) will produce a higher-pitched sound.

Try altering the posture of your lips. Changing the way you blow can also change the pitch of the note your ocarina makes. Try making a smaller "o" with your lips for a higher pitch or a larger "o" for a lower pitch. Experienced harmonica players use a technique called a "draw bend" to change notes' pitches. You can get a similar effect by pulling your tongue to the back of your mouth as you blow to "bend" the tone of your note downwards. This takes practice!