About the Museum

The Ocarina Museum is built around one of the largest private ocarina collections in the world. Instruments from other collectors will be presented alongside it, each clearly identified.

Every instrument is photographed against a plain background with a coin for scale, and catalogued with what can be measured or observed about it — who made it, its physical characteristics, and the musical key it sounds in.

The key notation

Keys are recorded as a note and a number: C3, G2, Bb3. The note is the key the instrument sounds in. The number denotes size, loosely following the tradition of Budrio, where the ocarina was invented.

Sizes run in bands six semitones wide, and the number falls as instruments get smaller and higher in pitch. The boundaries lie at B♭ and E:

Size number	Keys in that band
even	E, F, G♭, G, A♭, A
odd	B♭, B, C, D♭, D, E♭

So a size is not a pitch range in the ordinary sense. B♭ is one semitone above A, but it belongs to the next band down: the collection holds A2, A4 and A6, and above each of those sits B♭1, B♭3 and B♭5. The same happens at the other boundary, where E♭3, E♭5 and E♭7 are followed by E2, E4 and E6.

These numbers are deliberately not translated into soprano, alto or tenor labels, which are not used consistently between ocarina makers.

About the data

The catalogue is maintained as a spreadsheet, and this site is generated from it. Acquisition and ownership records are kept separately and are not published.