About
I've been making and playing ocarinas since 2011. I first discovered the ocarina through David Erick Ramos's YouTube videos and was immediately captivated by the instrument's distinctive sound. I use ocarinas for playing a range of Irish and other folk music. Ocarinas are very capable instruments, and I would like to raise awareness of this.
I started researching instrument teaching shortly after I started playing as I wanted to learn to play the ocarina well, but very little information was available. I studied the approaches used to teach other instruments, and began applying these to the ocarina. I also learned from other ocarina players at the international ocarina festival in Italy.
As my experience grew, I observed many ocarina players online making easily avoided mistakes, and started writing articles to offer advice. That turned into my book, 'Serious Ocarina Player'. Through my work as an instrument maker, customers have also asked me for advice or tuition.
I also noticed that the widely taught 'logical analysis' based approach for learning to read music wasn't working for me. Using self-observations and research into how people learn, I realised that the end goal of music reading is subconscious pattern recognition, and developed a method for directly training this. I taught this approach
at Sidmouth folk festival, and the workshop was packed-out and well received.
I have taught ocarina at various festivals, including the Sidmouth, Chippenham, Gate to southwell folk festivals, and Budrio ocarina festival in Italy.
