The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time has been the biggest Zelda hit in the entire Zelda series. Within its first year of being sold in stores around the globe, over seven million copies of the game were sold, outselling popular games like Halo (6.4 million in three years) among many others. The Ocarina of Time touched many people in many ways, and it truly was a testiment to the gaming industry as a whole. It completely reinvented the action adventure game by pulling it for the first time into three dimensions; it gave the story a depth never before seen in the Zelda universe with an amazing plot that has continued to be one of the most treasured stories written, and, let's face it, there are a lot of people out there who fell in love with the characters of Malon, Saria, Nabooru, Link, and, yes, the Princess Zelda.

The game truly is a classic.

There is one fact about The Ocarina of Time that I have absolutely found fascinating. Even though the ocarina appeared in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, The Ocarina of Time made it such a critical element of the game that the instrument of the ocarina, once quite obscure, become world-renowned. Most gamers these days could tell you exactly what an ocarina is, roughly how to play it, not to mention the type of sound that it makes. The most impressive thing of all, however, is how the demand to purchase ocarinas has skyrocketed. There are many well-known places now that deal exclusively with selling ocarinas. Ocarinas are sold in clay, wood, and ceramic, made in pendant and sweet potato shapes, each of them with a different number of holes and a different range, each of them hand-crafted... and people are absolutely crazy about buying them.

Personally, I myself have three of them, each of which very different from one another. The first was a six-hole blue pendant ocarina that I got from the local renaissance festival; the second was a four-hole Zelda-themed sweet potato ocarina that I bought in Seattle. However, the prize of my collection is an ocarina made by Spencer of Spencer's Ocarinas. Depending upon what circles you frequent, you either have heard legendary tales about him, or you've never heard of the guy. For those of you who have not heard of him and are absolutely crazy about ocarinas, you're definitely missing out.

Spencer is very well known for his twelve-hole ocarina. The 12-hole ocarina, as I've found out in my research, was originally designed in Japan. If you were to do an Internet search for these rare beasts, almost every time you're going to hit a dead end with a site filled with thousands of illegible Japanese characters. After several months of off-and-on searching, I ultimately received a tip to find Spencer, with the recommendation that his ocarinas were perhaps the best you could find. So I E-mailed him a purchased one of his Zelda-themed ocarinas, and I am infinitely happy that I did so.

Spencer's 12-hole ocarinas.

 

The Zelda ocarina with the Zelda songbook.

There were a lot of reasons that I loved Spencer's ocarina better than my other ones. The first reason was that my four-hole and six-hole ocarinas were severely limited on range. The four-hole could only achieve a full octave (C to C´), whereas the six-hole could only reach an octave plus one (C to D´). Playing songs like "Zelda's Lullaby" was impossible because the song had a much greater range than my ocarinas could handle. Spencer's ocarina reaches a full octave plus five (lo A to hi F) and is able to reach the extra notes needed to play all of the Zelda ocarina songs from both The Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask in addition to many of the well-known Zelda themes like Kakariko Village and the Dark World theme from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Best of all, my ocarina came with two songbooks, one filled with 26 Zelda themes and the other filled with 23 folk songs and TV and movie themes, including songs from The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and The Simpsons.

 

I also loved the instrument because, to my great surprise, the ocarina was very simple to learn. Even though there are 12 holes on Spencer's ocarinas, it took me less time to learn the fingering for his ocarina than it took me to learn the fingering for my six-hole ocarina. Most of the fingerings are very intuitive, and very quickly I was playing music without concentrating about which fingers had to be up or down to play the songs. Free of charge, the ocarina comes with a very detail instruction manual that makes it easy to play, even if you aren't musically inclined. Being able to read music is not a requirement as everything is shown with diagrams.

The instruction booklet and the two songbooks.

The best part of the ocarina, however, is that this ocarina has the most beautiful sound of any of the ocarinas I've ever heard. It's not difficult at all to make these ocarinas shine with musical brilliance that will stun you. I myself nearly dropped it the first time I played after hearing how wonderful it sounded, and I'm definitely not joking with you. The feeling of hearing Zelda music coming from within rather than from another game is... simply amazing. I've taken the liberty to showcase how "good" a player I am by playing a few songs for you.

Zelda's Lullaby (266 kB)

Hyrule Castle Marketplace (187 kB)

(Please don't focus on how badly I play. I spent perhaps 20 times trying to get a perfect version of "Marketplace" that I gave up the moment I got close!)

The ocarinas really are beautiful, and they're great collectors' items. I keep my ocarina proudly on my bureau in my room which houses my samurai swords, my onyx chess set, and my graduation cap and diploma. It's definitely worth the investment if you're really a big fan of Zelda.

The down side is inevitably the cost. Spencer's ocarinas are somewhat pricey, and many of you may not have the money to purchase one yourselves. However, I have to recommend that, if you get one ocarina in your lifetime, this is definitely the one to get because of the sheer sound quality and the versatility of the instrument. Once you start playing, you definitely will not want to put it down.

To order one of Spencer's ocarinas, you can look on Ebay using this link.