Ocarina in a Workshop: A Teacher’s Guide

Hi, fellow teacher! You know the moment. Ten people at the table, ten freshly joined ocarinas, and everyone blows at once. Half the studio whistles. The other half just hisses - and looks at you.

This is where it's decided whether people take home joy or disappointment. And it usually comes down to one detail: how the air jet from the mouthpiece meets the labium edge in the window. Not the finger holes. Not the glaze. Not the mouthpiece itself.

This article is for you if you want to teach the ocarina at your workshop without relying on luck. We'll show you what really happens inside the instrument (including an animation you can play right at your class), how to build the lesson and how to rescue an ocarina that won't play.

From Janek Sedlář to the concert stage

The ocarina isn't just a clay whistle from a country fair. When we were starting out, we were introduced to it by Janek Sedlář - a maker whose ceramic ocarinas are concert instruments (follow his work at @clayinstruments; the story of the Sedlář family is told in the documentary Žít lehce). Veronika Vitázková plays his ocarinas at a professional level - she has even performed at Carnegie Hall.

Janek developed the shaping and tuning method with us. At Rélyéf we translated it into a mould that even a complete beginner can handle in one afternoon. The development went step by step, and you can follow all of it on our site:

1. March 2026 - first test at a workshop in Ateliér Čertovina (How to Make an Ocarina)
2. NCECA 2026, Detroit - the ocarina as our main project at the conference
3. April 2026 - the step-by-step process (How to Make a Ceramic Ocarina: A Complete Guide for Future Masters of Sound) and the whole process in a reel
4. May 2026 - lessons learned from workshops and class formats (Ocarina Workshop: The Sound of Clay)
5. October 2026 - new YouTube video - Ocarina Tutorial

How an ocarina makes its sound - and why an edge alone isn't enough

In short: the air jet doesn't split on the edge once and for all. It oscillates. It slips under the edge into the chamber and a moment later slips back out through the window - several hundred times per second, exactly at the frequency of the note. That oscillation is what you hear as the note.

The whole instrument has four parts, and each has its own job:

1. Windway - flattens your breath into a thin, straight ribbon of air. The windway must be smooth and crisp at the exit, with no crumbs of clay. Every burr frays the jet, and instead of a note you get noise.
2. Window - a short gap through which the air jet escapes freely. This is where it can swing up and down.
3. Labium (edge) - a clean, straight, thin edge on the opposite side of the window. What matters most isn't the angle but the aim: the axis of the jet from the windway must point exactly at the edge, not above it and not below it.
4. Chamber - an air "cushion" that works like a spring. When the jet slips in, the pressure rises and pushes air out. When the jet leaves, the pressure drops and draws it back. This is how the chamber "gives the jet its frequency".

Unlike a flute, an ocarina's pitch isn't set by the length of a tube. The ocarina is a so-called Helmholtz resonator (like blowing across the neck of a bottle), and what counts is the ratio between the open area of the holes and the volume of the chamber:

f ≈ c⁄2π · √( A ⁄ (V · L) )

Here c is the speed of sound, A the area of the open holes, V the chamber volume and L the effective wall thickness at the hole. For the workshop, this gives three practical rules:

• Bigger hole = higher note. That's why you tune starting from a small hole and enlarge it in tiny steps. There's no going back.
• Where a hole sits matters less than how big it is. Hole placement is mostly about finger comfort.
• Clay shrinks during drying and firing, and the whole scale moves up. The intervals between notes stay the same, because everything shrinks evenly. Clay typically shrinks by around 10% (depending on the clay body and firing), which raises the pitch by about two semitones. The kit accounts for this for you: the calibration plate is marked "C+10%", meaning it is set for tuning to C including 10% shrinkage. At Čertovina the ocarina sounded B♭ as greenware and played a clean C after firing - exactly as calculated. Tip: as greenware, the ocarina should sound about two semitones lower than it will play after firing - if you're tuning to C, look for B♭ at the greenware stage. A tuner app on your phone is enough for a workshop. Janek Sedlář tunes his concert ocarinas with a precision tuner - that's the difference between a workshop piece and a professional instrument.

The mouthpiece and labium decide whether the ocarina plays. The holes and chamber decide what it plays. That's why the holes are tuned at the very end, once the ocarina produces a clean note.

Look at the holes - each has a different diameter. Bigger hole = higher note. That's why you tune from a small hole and enlarge it step by step. Photo: Ateliér Čertovina, Věra Luňáčková

From the Rélyéf studio: we tune the holes last

Tomáš advises: "At our first workshops we tuned the holes before the ocarina made any sound at all. Mistake. Now we just pre-cut small holes through the mould, then cut the window - and only once the ocarina whistles cleanly with all holes closed do we tune. It saves a lot of frustration, and often one broken instrument per group."

Tomáš adds: "I finish the direction of the windway in the mouthpiece and the labium edge at leather-hard. The clay already holds its shape but can still be cut and refined. I set the spot where the air hits the edge with the included plate (a spatula) - the principle is similar to the willow whistles we made as kids."

Věra confirms: "I see it every time at Čertovina: once people understand that the air has to aim exactly at the edge, they fix the mouthpiece themselves. Showing it once in a picture is enough."

A 3-hour lesson plan

You'll need the ocarina kit: 2 mould halves (one with a wedge for the window with the labium), a calibration plate for setting the air jet and a tuning cutter on a wooden handle (all included in the kit), plus a hole cutter, thin plastic film (a thin plastic bag or cling film) and a tuner app on your phone. A handheld extruder with an ocarina die speeds up making the windway, and a harp cutter gives you clean seams.

1. Slab and moulds (20–30 min) - fine, well-wedged clay without coarse grog, an even slab of 4–6 mm (on a slab roller it's the same for every student). Line the mould with plastic film and press the clay into both halves - the slab gets compressed and thinned in the mould - then trim the edges with the harp cutter.
2. Windway and joining (15–20 min) - push the calibration plate up against the wedge on one mould half and build the windway around it from a thin strip of clay (or use the extruded profile). Score the edges with a serrated rib, apply slip and press both halves together. The seam must be airtight - a leaky seam is the second most common cause of failure.

3. Cleaning up (5 min) - open the mould and use the harp cutter to trim the excess around the plate. The plate stays in the windway and holds its shape.

4. Decoration (10–20 min, optional) - if you want a decorated ocarina (with lavender, for example), place the flexible stencils in the mould before the clay (i.e. before step 1). After cleaning up the unmoulded ocarina, brush engobe over the surface and peel off the leaf stencil.

5. Pre-cutting the holes (10 min) - use the top mould half as a template and cut small holes through the guide openings. Keep them small for now - tuning comes at the end.
6. Window and labium (10–15 min) - with a knife, cut the window opposite the end of the plate and shape the edge. Check that the axis of the windway points at the edge (see the animation above). Test: does it whistle cleanly with all holes closed? If not, adjust the direction of the windway in the mouthpiece and the shape of the labium - not the holes.

7. Tuning the holes (15–25 min) - at the very end - enlarge the holes with the tuning cutter, from the lowest note to the highest, checking with the tuner after every step. Bigger hole = higher note.
8. Drying and firing - dry slowly under plastic; cracks most often appear at the mouthpiece and along the seam.

For children or a one-off event, 90 minutes with simplified tuning is enough. You'll get the best results in 2-3 hours: shaping and the mouthpiece on the first day, tuning and decoration on the second (details in The Sound of Clay).

First aid at the workshop

Most ocarinas that won't play have one of these five faults. You'll find the first three in the animation as well.

The last row was described by one of you in a review of the kit - and it's exactly why we test the mouthpiece both before and after cutting the holes.

If you correct the windway direction and the edge (labium) too many times, the clay "remembers" it and can drift back to the wrong position during firing.

Going to teach the ocarina? Write to us

The ocarina is the kind of workshop people remember. They don't just take home a piece - they take home an instrument they can play at home. And as a teacher, you now know why it plays.

Have you run a music workshop before? Come across a fault that's missing from the table? Tell us in the comments - Věra and Tomáš reply.

Want to try the ocarina at your own workshop? Equip your studio with the ocarina kit and watch the whole process on video.

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