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Playing by Ear - Not infrequently, you will find songs that are playable on the ocarina but that are written outside the ocarina’s range. Sometimes you can play those same songs as written if you also know how to play your ocarina as a G instrument. (Please see "Playing the G Ocarina as a Non-transposing Instrument" that appears later in this section of the web site.) If not, you can either transpose the song or play it by ear. Transposition, which is not difficult to learn, is taught in simple books of theory, such as Mel Bay’s Students Guide to Music Theory on my SUGGESTED MUSIC BOOKS list. In many situations, however, playing a song by ear is quicker and less tedious than transposing: if you can hum a song by memory, then you can play it by ear. Contrary to what many people I talk to seem to think (and to what I thought a few years ago), playing by ear is not a mysterious innate ability reserved for a gifted few. Rather, it is a skill that improves dramatically with practice, and the ocarina is an ideal instrument on which to develop it. As you carry your ocarina along with you, try playing–without looking at a sheet of music–any melody that comes to mind. Experiment a little to find the best note to start the song. If you find yourself in an awkward key full of sharps or flats, try starting the song on the note above or the note below. I used to play a game with my wife when we were getting our little guys ready for bed: she would say the name of a tune and I would have to play it by ear. The more you do this kind of thing the more natural it becomes. In turn, the more you can play by ear, the easier it is to play with other musicians and the more you feel like a real musician.

If you play strictly by ear, I encourage you to use the Learning to Play Mountain Ocarinas^® curriculum to learn to read music. Deciphering those little notes is probably much simpler than you think, and it opens up a whole world of music to you. A majority of the songs that I play, I have never heard performed by anyone–all those tunes would be unavailable to me had I not learned to read music.