Musically, it's brilliant, but the sound of all those ocarinas is, to me, very quickly cloying. In fact, this is one reason why I don't care for ocarina ensemble music, such as GOB's work. I'm not saying that the ocarina's sound is unpleasant, but I do think it can be irritating after a while, and I think this is due to that very focused property of it. I may be alone in this, but I think the sound of the ocarina really does assault the ear a bit, especially those ocarinas that we tend to describe as having a 'pure' sound. If you record in a proper sound studio, or take pains to deaden the acoustics in your recording space, it's less of a problem. So if there are any resonant frequencies in your recording space, they're going to sound very 'hot' when you record. It's hard to record the ocarina, as you said, and I think that's because the energy isn't spread out into other harmonics as much as it is with many other instruments. One that works well for one case wont necessarily in other situations.That's true, but I think the issues are all related. How an ocarina sounds to the player is different to how it sounds recorded, which is different again to how it sounds in a mix. Robert Hickman wrote:I feel the point with the textured sound isn't so much how it sounds alone, but how it sounds when mixed with other instruments. These elements have to be emphasized to be audible at a distance. This is quite probably why historical 'budrio' ocarinas, designed for performance, have a heavily textured sound. Without very careful treatment, they can easily sound harsh/unpleasant as the needed quiet elements are lost. With 'forgiving' (volume limited) accompaniment. I believe ocarinas will always have there most appreciable sound in a quiet listening space where the quiet nuisances of there sound may come out. Also this kind of thing is not dissimilar to how 'mainstream pop' music is treated, generally having a very flat and loud tonality. For one thing it's caused me to question if the ocarina is a good session instrument at all. Because of which it sticks out like a sore thumb in the mix and honestly sounds rather obnoxious. Ocarinas also direct the fundamental forward (away from the line of air leaving the voicing), so it is more prominent to an observer than the player.īecause of this the nuances of the sound are very easily lost in loud environments, for instance I've been listening to recordings I've made in music sessions and the *only* thing that comes through in the mix is the sine-wave fundamental, the other content is totally lost. The wind tone in particular drops of very quickly at distance and is far less noticeable to a listener (or mic) than to the performer. Although these two both positively contribute and 'smooth' the fundamental, they are of substantially lower volume than the fundamental is, and are very easily lost in recording. It does have some harmonics which I've noticed on spectrum graphs, as well as the 'wind noise'. The ocarina is well known for having a strong fundamental tone.

Overtones flute repertoire 3 recording