How to Play 99 Bottles of Beer on the 6 Hole Ocarina

About 99 Bottles of Beer

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This is a traditional American counting song, anonymous like most road-trip and camp songs and passed along by ear rather than printed. The whole appeal is the countdown: each verse drops the number by one, so a full run from ninety-nine takes ages, which is exactly why bored kids on buses and around the fire keep it going. There is no single origin. It just grew out of the long-drive habit of singing to pass time.

On the ocarina it is about as friendly as a tune gets. The melody stays inside a five-note span from C to G, all in the middle of the 6-hole range, with no leaps and nothing high to chase. It makes a good one to drill early, since the short phrase repeats and you can settle into the fingering before moving on to anything faster.

99 Bottles of Beer Lyrics

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Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, Ninety-nine bottles of beer. If one of those bottles should happen to fall, There’d be ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.

99 Bottles of Beer Ocarina Tab

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