Wins and Fails and Birthdays; Noble Plastic AC Ocarina
Operation ‘Quiet Birthday’: Great success!
Operation ‘Update more in the holidays’: Epic fail!
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So yeah, my birthday and not a few other notable birthdays including our gracious web-host Tony, guest artist Saphy and my friend Xtina’s were in the past week. To report, it went really well I think. In terms of gifts received it went to plan that not a great number of people felt a need to bring me anything; this is good because while I appreciate the thought I don’t have a great need of material things and so I’d rather not have people fuss over me. But I must say my expectations for things I might get this year were surpassed. For your information, I now have incoming a bass ocarina from Noble which might feature in an upcoming video, I can buy a legitimate version of photoshop (finally) to draw in, and I have a scanner so I can draw in pencil if I choose to. 🙂
I do actually have a drawing on the way, and it is a reasonable one, but it’s going a bit slow. And it’s none the faster for me having realised that the proportions are horribly wrong in some key areas. >.< That's what I get for not starting with the mannequin, grrrr. But I think I'll just make a note of the mistakes I tend to make and finish this picture as it is, and then try not to do things like make necks too short and that again. So just letting you know I am alive. I'll write some more after I get some sleep. I've gotten a bit of a tummy bug (or for those with a higher vocabulary, an illness) and it's making me a bit uncomfortable at the moment. I need to get all the rest I can while working during the day and trying to study and do assignments at night. >.< [EDIT] Alright, now we're talking! My Noble plastic alto C ocarina arrived today. 😀 I'll probably make a little video sometime soon if I can so you can hear it and see it better. It's pretty cool, because I've played my other sweet potato ocarina a fair bit I was able to pretty much pick this one up and play right off. The first few songs I tried sounded a little airy as I got used to the breathing pressure needed for this oc, but once I moved outside I was able to play almost every song I know without much difficulty. There are only a few things that aren't quite to my liking about this ocarina, one of which being the angle of the mouth piece. The ocarina I first really started to play was an in-line ocarina where all the holes are ...in line with the mouth piece (surprise!). My first transverse (sweet potato) was that clay double, and if you look at that closely you'll notice that even though it's a sweet potato ocarina, the holes are not very far off from being in line with the mouth piece. This means that it's quite easy and comfortable to hold and play because your hands can hold it from either side (like as if you were eating a sandwich or burger 😀 ). But this ocarina is very transverse. The holes line up at right angles to the mouth piece and this means that your hands have to match. You basically have one arm directly in front of you with your hand facing towards you, and one arm bent out to your side with your hand quite close to your face. It's not the most comfortable of postures to hold for a long period of time; I'm sure I'll get used to it, but I definitely noticed when I ripped it out of the packaging and proceeded to play for a good half hour. xD
pretend you’re eating a carrot sideways *nods* :3
Except now you’re eating an ocarina.
Nom nom nom. Heheh
Actually it’s not too bad, just not what I was used to.
What makes this all 150% cooler is that my clay bass C ocarina from Noble arrived the next day. 😀 Oh yes!
wah how many of them do you even have now O.O
In order of when I got them:
Small clay 6-hole from Songbird Ocarinas
Polycarbonate G, and C, from Mountain Ocarinas (10 and 9 holes, respectively, both count as soprano)
Souvenir clay 11-hole from Japan (broken)
Clay double alto C from Fengdizhige on TaoBaoWang (has 17 holes)
Plastic alto C from Noble
Clay bass C from Noble
So that makes 7 if you include the broken one. 🙂 I’ve lent out the mountain ocs to friends though so I’m not playing them (which is why the plastic noble is good ‘cos I have a non-fragile one to practice/muck around on).
The next one on the list to get is probably a triple ocarina from Focalink, they look pretty cool. A triple bass from STLocarinas would probably be epic sauce too (those things are like the size of my head at least I swear!) but that’s more expensive. It’d probably fit my collection to get a soprano 12-hole too, but I don’t really like the high pitched notes; that’s why bass is so awesome to play. 😀
Not sure if I’ll ever want to get pendant ocarinas.. I have my 6 hole which has pendant style fingering and it’s kinda weird. But hey, if I go crazy and buy like 80 ocarinas then sure. xD I’ve just gotten some nice ones to play so I don’t think I need any more for quite a while.
yeah i’d stick with a few good ones tbh :S ones that will cover all the ranges XD sounds really confusing having so many
Lol it’s not that confusing. This one plays a range, that one plays the same range, this one plays the same range but down an octave… really quite simple stuff. xD Confusing would be switching between key of C and G and trying to play the same concert notes…but since I pretty much only have key of C it’s fine. 😀
yeah but if you have ones that play in the same range wouldnt you like be more fond of the sound of one of them? and each one probably has a different cavity size so if you stuck with one you’d probably make it resonate better ><