I didn’t grow up playing an instrument.

My father never played acoustic guitars when camping, I always pouted when my mom pointed out my lithe, slender fingers as suitable for the piano, and I was never the high school band geek. It was only my younger brother who held a brief and passionless affair with the oboe – that most unfortunate of instrument names – a name that would serve well a long-eared, droopy-eyed Basset Hound, his low hummed whine uncannily resembling the oboe, too. Kazoos and plastic harmonicas aside, little else has wetted my lips or weighted my hands with their musical capacity.

Little did I know my iPhone, itself, could become a musical instrument with Ocarina. Developer Smule has created Ocarina for the musically-inclined, transforming your iPhone into a real, live musical instrument able to translate your every breath, touch and movement into music. The Ocarina, itself, is actually a flute-like wind instrument traced back to early Mesoamerican times when it was a common instrument, taking all forms, but mostly in its prototypical egg-shape. A simply constructed instrument, it consisted of four to twelve finger holes, a mouth projection to blow breath into, and a reliance on the ratio of hole size to the volume of the instrument cavity to produce sound, rather than the holes’ placement as with flutes and other modern windpipes, an occurrence known as the Helmholtz resonance. Smule has modernized this contraption into one of sheer fun and delight, and of staggeringly impressive capacity, as noted by the San Francisco Symphony pairing up with Smule to host an Ocarina Master Class at Davies Hall just last month. Quite astonishing. Super cool.

Smule’s Ocarina is a basic four-hole set-up, in staggered rows to help with, they claim, multitouch issues with the phone (however, you may change the layout from the default staggered to square, should this feel more comfortable). Playing the instrument involves you blowing into the mic, placing your mouth fairly close, but not so close your lips salivate on the cool plastic exterior, and pressing your fingers against the glowing dots onscreen meant to be the holes on the Ocarina. Different finger combinations produce different sounds and pitches, and tilting the phone changes vibrato rate and depth, creating your own personal symphony. When a button is pressed down, it highlights and a ring encircles it, and as you blow into the mic, sound waves are visible, reverberating on-screen in a slowly undulating tide to the opposite side. The default blue color of the Ocarina may be a bit melancholy to some, so an array of color choices is available for both the touch buttons and the sound wave from your breath – I happened to like yellow buttons with a red sound wave.

The Ocarina iPhone app offers you a brief tutorial on how to play, and also some simple written instructions. Granted I’m completely and utterly hopeless when it comes to conjuring something musical rather than cacophonous, I read in the instructions how to move your fingers to play that familiar scale of “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do” (cue The Sound of Music, running through meadows, and incessantly cheerful and mischievous kids). I was so elated after the 15 minutes it took for me to play it effortlessly, I recorded myself playing on my laptop, forever enshrined for my personal adoration.

However, don’t feel shame in wanting to share it with others; in fact, you may record and share your Ocarina recordings globally. Tap on the globe icon in the navigation bar and a 3-D globe will emerge, slowly revolving, with Ocarina melodies from around the world spiraling upward toward infinity in some Ocarina musical DNA sequence. Cycle through the globally saved melodies with the navigation bar at the top, or simply tap somewhere in the world to listen. If you wish to be a part of this massive compendium, make sure you name your Ocarina (I named mine Jujube). Or, should you just wish to learn a song and not create your own, you can find hundreds of songs, from movie scores to classic video game themes to classical music, all in easy ocarina notation, on Smule’s website.

If I wanted to, I could simply send my crafted melodies through email via my iPhone, but I think I’ll keep them closely treasured – not that they’re anything special, more I don’t wish to embarrass myself with nascent musical prowess.

Granted I have access to a wonderfully astute and adept guitar player (hello, boyfriend), I’ll still try to wear callouses on my fingers and learn to play a live acoustic, but on my own time, the Ocarina is a fun and pleasant-sounding instrument that allows even the talentless, the musically-deficient, to produce harmonious melodies all on their own.