About

Why a hum-along ocarina?

On 5 November 2026, Nintendo's remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out on Switch 2. Its most charming new trick is that you can play Link's songs by humming them, or by playing a real ocarina, near the console's microphone. Little Goose is a one-day celebration of that idea for anyone with a browser.

What's original here

Only the idea of a five-note ocarina comes from the game: five buttons, tuned D, F, A, B and D. Everything else was made for this site: the twelve songs in the Songbook, the Goose Road and its characters (Nonna Ottavia, Ludovico the owl, Brother Anselm and the Great Goose), Echo Grove, the name-song rules and all the art. None of the game's melodies are reproduced. The Songbook tunes were checked so that none of them matches a song from the game.

Little Goose is an unofficial fan celebration and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo.

How it hears you

• Your audio never leaves your device. The browser hands the microphone signal to a few lines of JavaScript that run locally. Nothing is recorded, stored or uploaded.
• About 60 times a second the site takes 2,048 audio samples and compares the wave with shifted copies of itself, a method called the normalised square difference function (from the McLeod Pitch Method). The shift where the wave lines up best with itself is one period, and one divided by the period is the pitch.
• Everybody hums in a different key, so when you first press Hum to play you hum one comfortable note. That becomes your Root. The other stones are measured from it: Moss is 3 semitones up, Ember 7, Tide 9, Sky 12. That's the same shape as the game's notes, in your own key. Hit the octave above or below and it still counts.
• A note counts once you hold it steady for about 0.15 seconds within the tolerance you pick (Forgiving, Normal or Strict). To play the same stone twice, leave a tiny gap between the two.
• Whistling works too, and so does a real ocarina. Press Retune to set a new Root.
• No mic? Every game works with taps, or with the keyboard: A plays Root, and ↓ → ← ↑ play Moss, Ember, Tide and Sky, laid out like a certain 1996 controller. Keys 1–5 work too.

What's saved

Your theme, Root note, tolerance, songs played, high scores and best runs are kept in your browser's local storage, and nowhere else. Share links carry only what's in the URL: a score, a seed, a name or a string of note numbers.

Sources

• Remake release date and features: RPG Site, Engadget, Game Informer
• The original game's dates, sales, scores and development: Wikipedia: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
• Ocarina history, etymology, types and acoustics: Wikipedia: Ocarina, Wikipedia: Giuseppe Donati
• Helmholtz resonance (bottles, car windows, ocarinas): Wikipedia: Helmholtz resonance
• The xun of Banpo and Hemudu: China Daily: Musical heritages from ancient China
• Mesoamerican ocarinas: World Museum of Indigenous Cultures (wmic.net)
• “Sweet potatoes” in World War II: FluteTunes: My Flute Goes to War
• The ocarina sales boom after 1998: The National Videogame Museum
• 12-hole Alto C range (A4–F6): instrument maker specifications, e.g. Lark in the Morning
• Budrio's ocarina craft and festival: Turismo in Pianura (Bologna)

Credits

Typefaces: Fraunces and Nunito via Google Fonts. Sound: synthesised live in your browser with the Web Audio API. No samples, no libraries, no trackers. Built for dailyma.de, where a new site goes up every day.

Also on 5 November: Bonfire Night in the UK. Play Homecoming in the Songbook for a few fireworks of your own.