A few weeks before that, I had received a brand new 12 hole ocarina in the mail. I don't now why I wanted it, or why I was constantly checking ebay for more listings of Spencer's ocarinas. But I did. And even when I kept losing auction after auction, I still kept coming back, determined to win that Zelda replica. I came really close to winning on November 6, 2006 and later that afternoon, I received a "second chance offer" from Spencer....and I went into shock *_* I leaped at the chance to get this ocarina for $255.00 ($263.45 with Shipping, which was a little more than I had budgeted for, lol). Five days later, I received this email:
"Hello,
Thank you for your purchase and prompt payment. Unfortunately, there was a slight delay in the shipment of your ocarina because it was damaged right after your purchase. While packing it, I knocked it onto the cement floor and chipped the mouthpiece. I have had to construct another one to send you, and it will be complete and shipped out Monday. I apologize for this inconvenience.
Thank you for your patience.
Spencer
Spencer's Ocarinas"
Once again, my zelda ocarina was broken, the first being my Songbird Sweet Potato several years prior ;_; About two weeks later, the ocarina finally arrived and I was stoked. I played it almost as much as my first ocarina and even though I was still learning how to play it, I had my first on-stage ocarina performance several weeks later for a Christmas party! It didn't go very well, but it was still fun, haha.
When my mom had found out how much I paid for the ocarina, she told me "If you're going to pay that much for an instrument, you better find a way to share it with the world!" I think she was half-joking, but it made me think. On August 26, 2006, I had opened an account on Youtube.com, which was WAY different from the Youtube we have today (google didn't acquire Youtube until November of that year). I decided to do a search for ocarinas on Youtube, and this is what I found...
There were actually several other videos, but I can't seem to find them :/ Needless to say, there wasn't much going on on the American Youtube other than Zelda tunes (Mountain Ocarinas were doing their own thing, lol) and I didn't find a single video about 12 hole ocarinas in the West. So, even though I was a little scared to put myself out there on the web for privacy issues, I posted my first ocarina video:
I was super excited and VERY nervous about the reception it would get. Within days I received my first few comments!
After that, I was posting videos every few weeks and my subscribers began to grow slowly, but steadily. Today, I have 201 videos, 72,859 Subscribers, and almost 33 million total views on my videos! Playing ocarina and posting videos have changed my life in so many ways and I hope to go a little more into detail of how over the next few weeks. Thanks for reading! - David
