November 8, 2026

A new songbook: 238 songs, a playable ocarina, and tabs that listen

The library has grown from 30 tabs to 238, each converted from real sheet music and checked note by note. Tabs now play in the song’s rhythm, can follow you through the microphone, and fit six kinds of ocarina.

This is the largest update Ocarina Tabs has had. It touches nearly every page, so here is what changed, including a few things we got wrong before.

The library

Until this week the site had 30 curated tabs. It now has 238:

• 66 folk tunes, most of them Irish and Scottish
• 56 from video games, with all 12 songs from Ocarina of Time and the songs from Majora’s Mask
• 30 for the holidays
• 29 classical pieces
• 26 hymns, spirituals and old standards
• 18 from film and television
• 11 from anime and Studio Ghibli films
• 2 pop songs

Each one was converted from real sheet music or a MIDI file, then checked note by note against that source. The source is credited at the foot of every tab.

Checking the new tabs meant checking the old ones too, and the results were not good. Fifteen of the original 30 had wrong notes. Three of them weren’t even the right tune: what we had called Canon in D, Scarborough Fair and Deck the Halls were other melodies under those names. All fifteen are fixed now. If you learned one of them here and it never sounded quite right, that was our mistake, and we’re sorry.

232 of the tabs now carry the song’s real rhythm, so when you press Play the long notes are long and the short ones are short.

Playing along

Any tab will play itself back in time, and you can tap a single note to hear just that one. Listen mode goes a step further. Turn it on, play your own ocarina, and the tab moves on each time the microphone hears the note you’re on. The listening happens in your browser; nothing is recorded or uploaded.

Here is a short one to try, the Song of Storms as Link plays it in the game:

The whole tune, with the windmill melody that follows, is on the Song of Storms page.

Six kinds of ocarina

The tabs used to assume a 12-hole ocarina in C. You can now read them for six: the 12-hole in C or F, the 6-hole pendant in C or F, the 4-hole pendant, and the double. Pick yours once under My ocarina and every tab is drawn for it, moved up or down an octave (or by the smallest step that works) so the song fits its range. Each of the six has a printable finger chart as well, as a PNG or a one-page PDF.

A new look

The site has been reset to look like a printed songbook, with the fingering charts drawn in ink on a paper page. Dark mode keeps the same layout in light ink on a dark page, which is easier on the eyes for evening practice.

The home page now has an ocarina you can play. Press Play and it fingers the opening of the Song of Storms, or tap its holes yourself and it sounds whatever note you’ve made. The Learn page has become a short lesson you work through: holding the ocarina, your first notes, and a first song, with charts that answer as you go.

Finding songs is easier as well. Search allows for typos, so “zeldas lulaby” still finds Zelda’s Lullaby, and every tab is marked Easy, Medium or Hard.

The Ocarina of Time remake

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out for Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5. When Link takes out his ocarina you can enter a song with the buttons, or play it to the console’s microphone, and Nintendo’s own page for the game suggests trying a real ocarina. Every song in the game uses the same five notes, and all five are plain fingerings on a 12-hole Alto C. We’ve written up how to play the remake on a real ocarina, with each song’s notes set beside its buttons.

What comes next

We’ll keep adding songs, and we’d like you to help choose them. Every tab page has a “Request a song” link, and so does a search that comes up empty. If you find a mistake, use “Report a wrong note” on that tab. We checked the library carefully, but you’re the ones playing it, and you’ll hear things we missed. We read every report.

Filed under: library, features, zelda