Tenrai Ocarina
An American workshop founded in late 2010, whose most expensive instrument was a playable replica of the ocarina from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Tenrai Ocarina sold handmade ocarinas from tenraiocarina.com. Its own About page gives the founding: “In late 2010, Tenrai Ocarina was born.” The earlier version of the site adds that it was a company founded in southern california.
The maker has not been asked about this page. Nothing from the site is reproduced here beyond short quotations, and a personal name that appears in the site’s machinery is deliberately not published — see what the museum holds. The chronology below is built from the mirror, and every row names where it came from.
Tenrai began in late 2010, twelve years after Ocarina of Time. Its most expensive instrument was a replica of the one from the game.
The instrument it was built around
The Ocarina of Time, at $279.99, carried nine holes, and the shop description sets out an unusual piece of design:
english pendant fingerings with elements of transverse fingering style… a regular 6 hole english fingering system, 2 sub-holes to go below the tonic, and one hole to reach a fourth above the octave. This gives it the range of a 12 hole transverse ocarina.
Alto C, A3 to F5, fully chromatic, about 5½ × 1⅔ × 3¾ inches. It shipped with an instruction book and a certificate of authenticity “modeled after Zelda’s letter to Link in the 3DS version”.
So the design problem was: take John Taylor’s English pendant system, which is a four-hole idea, and extend it until a pendant covers what players coming from the game expect a twelve-hole transverse to do. Two sub-holes below the tonic, one above the octave.
Where that system came from — worked out from scratch, or adapted from someone — is not established. “English pendant with sub-holes” has a genealogy, and the museum has not traced it.
What else it sold
Six-hole pendants at $29.99, in eleven finishes with names like Monsoon Seas, Blue Grotto and Green Tea. Eight-hole pendants at $39.99 — River Stone, Tahiti Grape, Babbling Brook. A 13-hole Transverse Pro at $129.99, later from $79.99. A Fairy Ocarina at $149.99, in the Squarespace era only.
Why the museum kept it
Tenrai sold a replica of a video-game instrument as its most expensive instrument, and did real design work to make that replica playable.
Chronology
Dates the museum has been able to establish, and where each comes from.
| Late 2010 | Tenrai Ocarina founded, in southern California | the About page, in both site designs |
| Jun 5, 2011 | Tenrai’s YouTube channel posts a video of its 8-hole soprano pendant | the video |
| Nov 21, 2011 | Tenrai’s YouTube channel posts “Song of Storms”, played on the 9-hole Ocarina of Time | the video |
| © 2013 | The PHP-era site carries a 2013 copyright line | page footers |
| Nov 10, 2016 | The Squarespace account is created — a date recoverable from inside the site’s own author identifier, and independent evidence of the move off the hand-built PHP site | the Squarespace metadata |
| Sep 1, 2021 | The last capture showing a working site | the Archive’s capture index |
| 2024 | The front page returns 403 Forbidden while the site’s own API still returns 200 | Archive captures |
| by Sep 2026 | Dead. Nothing answers on any scheme, by name or by address | checked September 13, 2026 |
What the museum holds of tenraiocarina.com, and on what terms: Tenrai Ocarina.