Exercises

Air Stream- When playing our ocarinas it is necessary to be able to control your air stream. By this I mean the speed at which your air is being blown. Many ocarinas will require you to increase your air stream as you ascend up the scale. Using your fore finger and thumb, hold a tissue out about a foot in front of your mouth. Then blow like you would when playing your ocarina. See how long you can keep the tissue "floating" and see how far out you can get it to go. This exercise will enable you to SEE your air stream.

Breath building-Being able to play long phrases in music is hard at first but there are many ways to improve your breath support. One great way to do this is by using a clock and an electronic tuner. Pick any note you wish and tune it to your tuner. Then time yourself to see how long you can sustain that note (IN TUNE!) Everyday try to beat your previous time.

You can download the music of Eric Saties Gymnopédies here
http://blog.stlocarina.com/storage/freesheetmusic/Satie.pdf

We hope youll find this helpful. Please let us know if you have questions about ocarina playing, well be happy to share our thoughts with you.

Add-on practice is great for almost any problematic passage, but it’s especially good if you’re playing a song with lots of jumps or lots of fast notes. Start off by just playing the first couple of notes of the passage and do this a few times until it’s really easy to play perfectly. Next add on the next note and practice several times until the passage is really easy. Each time the notes are easy to play perfectly (for example 5 times in a row with no mistakes) add another note and practice several times. You can also do this process backwards by starting with the last couple of notes of the passage and adding on the previous notes. This is called “reverse add-on practice.” Either way you chose to do add-on practice, it’s important to practice several times correctly each time you add a note. The goal is to practice the passage in such a way that those hard passages are laughably easy. Then you’ll NEVER make a mistake!

For a passage with a lot of faster notes, musicians will often use a practice method called “unit practice.” Let’s say you have long passage with lots of quick notes. Instead of practicing those notes slowly, try playing 2 beats quickly, rest for one beat, play the next 2 beats quickly, rest for one beat, and play the whole passage this way. By dividing the passage up into two beat groups, you can train your fingers to move quickly without practicing your mistakes. In general, this means you’ll be playing groups of 4 notes, however, if you’re practicing something like an Irish Jig, you’ll want to practice in units of 3 or 6 notes. This is a really fun way to get your fingers moving FAST!!

Do you find you keep messing up in the same place every time? Don’t go back to the beginning and try it again! If you do so, you’ll end up practicing the mistake! Instead look at the passage carefully. Exactly which note is bothering you? Try playing just a few notes before the problem note and then stop on the problem note! This is called a practice spot.  Practice the spot at least 10 times correctly. Then make the practice spot a bit bigger. Try starting a few notes earlier than before and go a few notes past the problem note. Gradually you can make the practice spot bigger and bigger. Finally, try the song from the beginning. Always remember when practicing a difficult song that you should mark where the hard spots are and practice those first. Once they are comfortable, then you can try putting them back into the song. Don’t start with just playing through the song or you’ll practice your mistakes.