Category: Evaluation

Once all the instruments were complete I decided to evaluate how well they played etc. As I am not a flute play I asked a friend to play the flutes and compare to a typical flute.

Here is a sound sample of the plastic flute:

Here is a sound sample of the copper flute:

From this, I learn that the plastic was easier to play as the embouchure hole was in the right place and the lip plate made it a lot easier to make a sound with. The finger holes were ok although it was rather hard to cover them.

Whereas with the copper flute the embouchure hole was in an awkward place, this made it hard to produce the sound where as the fingers holes were more comfortable on this flute.

The tuning these two instruments weren’t my main concern as I wanted to learn how the instrument is made and how it produces sound, because of this I followed a method which told me the hole placement and sizes. Because of this, the instruments was able to produce several notes.

As I am able to play the saxophone I was able to play the experimental instrument.

Here is a sound sample:

Most of the finger positioning is comfortable it’s just the thumb hole which isn’t aligned with the rest. There were no also noticeable air leaks on this instrument so it was fairly easy to play. The main problem was that I wasn’t able to tune the whole instrument as the notes became unplayable past a certain point, I wasn’t able to find out why this happened but I think it could of related to the material used and the size of the tubing used.

 

 

 

 

 

I have so far run into a few problems when creating the ocarinas but I noticed that I haven’t looked at them and then worked out what I have learnt. So that is what I shall be doing in this post.

One of the problems is that when creating an ocarina out of clay the clay will harden and change slightly over time. This became a problem when I started playing one ( or trying to play) one of the ocarinas I had made for the test that seemed perfectly fine when making but became unplayable once hard. From this, I have learnt to keep an eye on all the ocarinas when hardening to check they are still playable.

Another from rather early on was that I didn’t have a time plan, I didn’t have any idea of when I wanted to do the test or what lessons I was going to make Ocarinas in. From this, I dedicated lessons to making the ocarinas for testing and another lesson for writing up my blog. From this, I have found it is much easier to keep on top of the plan that I had created for my EPQ.

The last problem is that I’m dealing with at the moment is that I am unable to create a sound from the ocarinas after they have been fired, to solve this I’ve looked at my resources and tried to get in contact with people that may be able to help but I’ve had no response.