ocarina

Ocarina usually is made ​​of baked clay or porcelain. Ocarina has 4 - 24 holes, which form the sound height when are closing by fingers of player. On the side of the instrument the mouthpiece extends, used to blow, built like the flute.

ocarina

Ocarina was created by Giuseppe Donati in the 2nd half of the nineteenth century but it said that this instrument has over 1200 years. It quickly gained popularity in Europe as an amateur instrument, not difficult to create with own hands. Attempts of ocarina improvement by adding the system of dampers and sliders failed. Sometimes it is used by contemporary composers.

Ocarina design does not enable adjusting sound height by blowing into the mouthpiece. Ocarina is made of ceramic and painted, mostly has the shape of sphere, potatoes, animals and birds. Ocarina is considered as a magical instrument that is associated with nature and mystery. In Peru, the people who play the ocarina can imitate Amazonian bird singing and also believe that the instrument can calm the nerves.

 

View the embedded image gallery online at:
http://www.instrumentyludowe.pl/en/ocarina.html#sigProId04a0766aa1

ocarina-legend
instrumenty

Instruments

The instruments recorded in the project come from museum of sound with more than 80 thousand object collections from the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw. Together with museum staff we have chosen 23 instruments guided by the following principles – they should be definitely folk, unusual, derived from the old times, Polish and coming from different cultural backgrounds, also exotic like e.g. Asian.

Recording a full range of tone of 23 instruments - tonal and sonic scale lasted several days. Thanks to the recordings - sound banks were created and have been used in the project in two ways. The first way was based on motion-sensitive controllers which created new practical instrumentarium for use during the workshops and animation activities. The second way was placing recorded sounds on the website for promotion of the idea of the project and gathering a great number of recipients.

All instruments were also photographed and described which enabled creating of publicly accessible compendium of information about them.