Carter?
"Yes sir?"
What is it, Carter?
"An ocarina, sir"
Bring it up here!
It came with some sheet music that shows each note as a box with four dots in it that can be shown as either open or closed:
https://ocarinasongbook.com/fingering-charts/four-hole/
It sounds unusually sophisticated — perhaps even better after forty-plus years -- and it's actually a relatively new design. The ocarina is ancient but the four hole chromatic design dates from the 1960s, so it's newer than those Gretsch ocarinas in the article.
You can get them in all sorts of shapes and sizes -- Thomann sell hand-painted clay 4H ocarinas in the shapes of strawberries and clownfish.
I wish we'd been taught to play these in school instead of with those Aulos descant recorders that everyone in British schools, particularly teachers I imagine, grew to hate.
I understand the intellectual satisfaction you're talking about. Now I'm wondering if we can push the minimalism to using these four holes with only two fingers. It seems doable from the diagram you link, using link fingers, and assuming half holes can be covered from the left side, and two holes can be covered with one finger at the same time. Would that work, or does the physicality of the instrument prevent that ?
Hi, Ocarina maker here! This is a genuinely interesting idea, and some Ocarina like the Goslings do have a double keying with a single finger.
Sadly with English Vessel Flutes (4/6/8 holes) the holes need to all be roughly equidistant from the center of the chamber, which makes a two finger setup ergonomically complicated while keeping a tangential fipple. It is also very desirable to use the pads of the fingers to cover the holes, making a good air seal is tricky with the middle of the finger. On ergonomics, it is also worth mentioning some Ocs get quite big as well! My largest 6 hole is almost 300mm wide, my fingers are not quite long enough to span this...
From memory — can't find the thing right now! — this would be a little difficult on the one I had because of its shape.
Also because — not sure how to explain it — but in my experience the holes on a four hole ocarina are also sort of finger grips, in a way. That is to say, you support the ocarina against your lips with at least one finger below it and two thumbs behind it, but part of your grip on the instrument is gently transferring from fingertip to fingertip as you play, a bit like a recorder or the pipe of bagpipes. The "open" low note has the loosest grip, and you might even subconsciously tilt your head back slightly to allow the weight of the ocarina to shift more to your thumbs.
It might be possible to design, effectively, a one-handed playable instrument that works the way you are talking about, but I think it would be quite uncomfortable.
I did recorder in primary school. One of the things I dimly remember along with certain games and rhymes. (I think in Irish schools they do the tin whistle.)
I gather a lot of schools are adopting ukuleles now. Ukes have a bad name, unfairly I think. (Listen to Eddie Vedder's "Ukulele Songs" album, very underrated). The ukulele is more forgiving than the recorder in my opinion.
Music shops sell a lot of ukuleles. Huge numbers at Christmas, it's a very popular gift.
It's a fabulous instrument, nuanced and subtle, and you can buy beautiful instruments these days for really not much money at all.
But AFAIK its popularity in school as a teaching instrument has as much to do with Spongebob as it does its capability :-)
You can also massively improve many inexpensive ukuleles by restringing them.