The US Army Issued Ocarinas to Soldiers in World War II | Hacker News Reader

The US Army Issued Ocarinas to Soldiers in World War II

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176 pointstomcam80 comments

  Carter?
  "Yes sir?"
  What is it, Carter?
  "An ocarina, sir"
  Bring it up here!

I've had a really nice, small "English four-hole" unglazed terracotta pendant ocarina since I was a kid. They are actually really fun to play and very visceral, in a sense; the way you can get a chromatic scale from only four hole sizes combinatorially is intellectually satisfying and weirdly easy to learn.

It came with some sheet music that shows each note as a box with four dots in it that can be shown as either open or closed:

https://ocarinasongbook.com/fingering-charts/four-hole/

It sounds unusually sophisticated — perhaps even better after forty-plus years -- and it's actually a relatively new design. The ocarina is ancient but the four hole chromatic design dates from the 1960s, so it's newer than those Gretsch ocarinas in the article.

You can get them in all sorts of shapes and sizes -- Thomann sell hand-painted clay 4H ocarinas in the shapes of strawberries and clownfish.

I wish we'd been taught to play these in school instead of with those Aulos descant recorders that everyone in British schools, particularly teachers I imagine, grew to hate.

I understand the intellectual satisfaction you're talking about. Now I'm wondering if we can push the minimalism to using these four holes with only two fingers. It seems doable from the diagram you link, using link fingers, and assuming half holes can be covered from the left side, and two holes can be covered with one finger at the same time. Would that work, or does the physicality of the instrument prevent that ?

Hi, Ocarina maker here! This is a genuinely interesting idea, and some Ocarina like the Goslings do have a double keying with a single finger.

Sadly with English Vessel Flutes (4/6/8 holes) the holes need to all be roughly equidistant from the center of the chamber, which makes a two finger setup ergonomically complicated while keeping a tangential fipple. It is also very desirable to use the pads of the fingers to cover the holes, making a good air seal is tricky with the middle of the finger. On ergonomics, it is also worth mentioning some Ocs get quite big as well! My largest 6 hole is almost 300mm wide, my fingers are not quite long enough to span this...

Hi, I have made quite a few "Ocarinas", but not designed for musicians, but rather curio collectors. I started to look into making well tuned ones, but for the place and time i was in, it did not seem worthwhile. I am getting ready to get going with clay again, and I might give tuned ocarinas a try again. Would love to see your site if you have one. Here is a picture of some of the ones I made: http://zafka.com/w5.html This next page shows some stages in making them, nothing to do with the actual sound making. http://zafka.com/fish_photos.html

From memory — can't find the thing right now! — this would be a little difficult on the one I had because of its shape.

Also because — not sure how to explain it — but in my experience the holes on a four hole ocarina are also sort of finger grips, in a way. That is to say, you support the ocarina against your lips with at least one finger below it and two thumbs behind it, but part of your grip on the instrument is gently transferring from fingertip to fingertip as you play, a bit like a recorder or the pipe of bagpipes. The "open" low note has the loosest grip, and you might even subconsciously tilt your head back slightly to allow the weight of the ocarina to shift more to your thumbs.

It might be possible to design, effectively, a one-handed playable instrument that works the way you are talking about, but I think it would be quite uncomfortable.

You can get them in all sorts of shapes and sizes

Indeed. I mentioned Hind above. Charlie Hind makes soprano, alto, tenor, bass, and double ocarinas, made from rosewood, cocobola, and other woods. [I'm not affiliated at all; just a fan of his products]: https://hindocarina.com/sweet_potato.shtml

I did recorder in primary school. One of the things I dimly remember along with certain games and rhymes. (I think in Irish schools they do the tin whistle.)

I gather a lot of schools are adopting ukuleles now. Ukes have a bad name, unfairly I think. (Listen to Eddie Vedder's "Ukulele Songs" album, very underrated). The ukulele is more forgiving than the recorder in my opinion.

Music shops sell a lot of ukuleles. Huge numbers at Christmas, it's a very popular gift.

It's a fabulous instrument, nuanced and subtle, and you can buy beautiful instruments these days for really not much money at all.

But AFAIK its popularity in school as a teaching instrument has as much to do with Spongebob as it does its capability :-)

I've found the ukulele a lot more rewarding than the guitar and have found I've learnt more about the guitar from it than from the guitar (if that makes sense.) It is a better introduction.The fact it has four strings makes it a lot easier to form chords on. At least for me.

I think I was put off by certain players for a while such as Tiny Tim and some of the hipster types. But it really has won me over in its way.

Eddie Vedder has done some excellent ukulele songs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W0B-1iF6S4

Then of course there is Taimane Gardner who is ridiculously good.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain [1] has some good ukulele material. They do a mix from serious music to comedy.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@UkuleleOrchestra

You can also massively improve many inexpensive ukuleles by restringing them.

What is that quote from?

This reminds me of my very first internet purchase. Back in the late 90's, when Ocarina of Time first came out, there was a website that a friend of mine found (back when you really felt like you found something on the internet) that sold basically perfect replicas of the titular ocarina, it even came with a silk pouch and a booklet that showed you how to play all the songs from the game. I think it was just some rando making clay instruments out of their house and figured they'd try to sell them on this new marketplace. I've still got it somewhere.

It feels like the internet is missing stuff like that now, or it's at least harder to find. Nowadays Nintendo would shut that seller down, or the seller would just be drop shipping them from Alibaba for a 500% markup.

Ocarina? Immediate clickbait for me; one of my hobbies is playing obscure musical instruments. I have one of these, made of rosewood. Great if you're a little bit more serious about learning, and highly recommended (by me): https://hindocarina.com/sweet_potato.shtml

Slight tangent, how would you recommend learning when you can't find anyone in-person? I was able to get adequate with a six hole from just tabs but am failing at anything bigger.

You loosely have two major types of Ocs that are popular: English Vessel Flutes (aka "pendants") and "little geese" (aka "Japanese-fingering" or "traverse")... Pendants typically have about the same range as a Trombone. Traverse will generally have the same range as a Clarinet. Some sopranos have an extra 1-5 notes at the top allowing most recorder music to be played. You also get multi-chambered Ocs but these are "advanced" instruments.

The best way to learn is to move straight over tabs and onto to score, while playing scales and arpeggios to learn the fingerings. This will give you access to a lot more music options! (There is a TON of sheet for Trombone and Clarinet!)

The next thing to recommend is learning to transpose keys. This isn't as hard or daunting as it sounds at first! You kinda just pretend your instrument is tuned differently, this widens your options a lot.

Then the final recommendation following this would be getting yourself a chromatic tuner. One of the most challenging parts of playing the Ocarina is playing it in tune!

Some people kind of don't care, and just are out there living their best lives squeaking for the joy of it, power to them: But if you ever want to play with other people you want to learn to discipline your breath pressure to control your tone/intune.

Over four octave ranges? Really?

Your memory reminded me of Mountain Ocarinas, which I happened upon probably around 2010. It looks like The Internet Archive has a snapshot back from 2000 https://web.archive.org/web/20000902223226/http://www.mounta... . Just some guy with a website selling his custom-designed instruments.

It looks like they stopped producing them in 2024, but that is still a long run. Though they did stop making wood ocarinas at some point in that time frame.

Hey I remember that site! I bought one from there as well, although I couldn't afford the actual replica so settled on a brown squarish one that came as a necklace.

Etsy has plenty of stuff like that, though you do have to do some filtering through the clones and the drop-shippers.

The US military thought a lot about how to entertain its soldiers because there was a lot of downtime during a war and most of them were draftees who didn't necessarily want to be there, Another thing they did was publish pocket paperback editions of books back when paperbacks were less common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Services_Editions

There were also the 2,400 specially-designed upright pianos it bought from Steinway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Vertical .

My favorite WW2 morale detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge

The British did better

Put beer into drop tanks on Spitfires

https://planehistoria.com/flying-pubs-spitfires-flew-beer-to...

Even though this is tongue in cheek, an ice cream barge with the requisite refrigeration and dedication of ship space 1000s of miles out in the south pacific is on a whole different scale of investment than this and they also had beer on the ships already. Though it probably wasn't as good as the british beer.

The British also had a brewery on a ship for use in the Pacific https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Menestheus

That still happens in America. Hike to a remote place, and get your friend to drop a keg in a mountain lake from his plane.

"Alpine Lake Keg Drop".

> When we get over the beachhead drop out of formation and land on the strip. We’re told the Nazis are fouling the drinking water, so it will be appreciated. There’s no trouble finding the strip, the battleship Rodney is firing salvoes on Caen and it’s immediately below.

Oh god. Yeah just follow the path of the 9 x 16" gun salvos from Rodney blowing big-ass holes in the ground, you can't miss it. LOL. Now those are some directions!

I like this boardgame kit that the Germans printed for their soldiers:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30082557

Interesting that they don't seem to have had much cultural impact. I've never heard of these, never seen them in war films. You don't hear songs wistfully using a wartime ocarina or referring to them.

Same. I was just able to order an original kit on eBay for $40, so demand isn’t high.

Does this explain why all the kids in the States got recorders after the war? It's still a thing in 4th grade for most kids in public school.

It is actually a Nazi thing. (Not kidding.)

https://duckduckgo.com/q=recorder+instrument+nazi

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/true-or-not/2025/02/19/quick...

That explains the Joey's ocarina in the movie Stalag 17.

An old favorite. "How stupid can you get, animal?"

Good movie, time to rewatch

My first thought

Ocarinas have the great advantage over recorders that you can safely play them without hearing protection. I have personally measured the loud notes on both a soprano recorder and an alto recorder and the SPL meter measured over 100dB(A) at the ear (indoors, so this includes reverberation too, but most recorders are played indoors). Note that standard recorder fingering allows for almost no control over dynamics; each note has a single set volume that it must be played at to sound in tune. (Advanced technique allows slight control over dynamics with alternative fingerings.) For this reason I do not think recorders should be used in schools.

Hello, Ocarina maker and long time player here! Ocs are unfortunately almost always significantly louder than recorders...

Thanks for correcting. I haven't actually played an ocarina, so I was relying on reports from people saying they are quiet instruments. It's very difficult to find objective SPL comparisons for musical instruments. But lots of people think recorders are quiet too, so I should have suspected that complaints about ocarinas being too quiet could be inaccurate too.

crafting one: https://youtu.be/tB8qTbdw-OQ?si=BQtwuOh83-nG8CrT

Back in the day in elementary school we were each issued a tonette

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