If you decide to buy a tuner for tuning your ocarinas, you must be certain to purchase one that is suitable for the job. It must have a needle meter, and be capable of detecting a 12 note equal-tempered scale (A through G, including the chromatics). I not-so-long-ago made the mistake of buying a guitar tuner, which is only good for the six strings of a guitar. This definitely won't work for ocarinas!

Using a Tuner

I have used several brands of tuners over the years,and they all had a needle meter (or an LCD facsimile of one). This feature is very important, because it shows how flat or sharp a note is.

If this ocarina will be "in tune with itself," and not concert pitched, the fundamental (lowest) note will be off (flat or sharp). The meter shows you how much, so you will be able to tune each note with the same degree of flatness or sharpness as the fundamental. As long as the intervals between the notes are accurate, any melodies correctly played on the ocarina will sound right.

To use a tuner is simple. Turn it on and prop it so you can easily see the meter. For an LCD tuner (pictured below), the "needle" on the meter is to the far left when it is not registering a note (figure 2), and also when a note is registering as being very flat (figure 3). If the tuner is tuned off, the LCD meter display is blank (figure 1).

Blow through the ocarina's mouthpiece to sound a note.