EXPERIMENTAL OCARINA
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
This is the page for the many types of experimental ocarinas I have made. I will detail more information about the ensembles featured on my site as well as show more information about the making and construction of those ensembles.
Since 2023 I have been experimenting with making cylindrical ocarinas. The first experiments were attempting to make pitch fluid ocarinas using a new method, one that could possibly allow much larger instruments to be made. Later I applied the lessons I learned in these first experiments to make chromatic 11 and 12 hole ocarinas. The use of a cylinder shape allows for very large ocarinas to be made with minimal effort and for the walls to be very thin, allowing for the ocarinas to be light weight and easy to hold. These ocarinas represent an interesting return to inline ocarina construction, a instrument shape I once thought was a dead end that could not make instruments with substantial ranges.
Since 2021 I have been heavily experimenting with the surface qualities of my ocarinas. Currently the entire ensemble set of instruments for Stolen Voice are a virtuous brick red terracotta. This is a surface that I developed in 2016 using a specific firing technique where the claybody is fired to about cone 2, well above its typical temperature range. Since 2019 onward I have not had the correct equipment or claybody to produce an exacting copy of the surface. This has led me to experiment with entirely new surfaces. I have long wanted to make a set of ocarinas that use the instrument surfaces s a kind of canvas where imagery can be presented. I am likely to allow this project to evolve into a new ensemble of instruments that have a different case use then that of Stolen Voice.
Above you can see some voicing adjustment tools I have made. These are used to adjust the edge shape of the voicing as well as the opening of the windway.
Most ocarina making tools cannot be bought and instead need to be made yourself. There is also no agreement with the how each tool should be shaped or work. Here you can see my ocarina slot sticks. These are used to shape the windway of an ocarina and each size instrument requires a sightly different size of slotstick depending on the specifics of how that instrument works. I have made many slot sticks over the years in order to expand the range of instrument that I can make.
