Weeks 3-4 · voice · breath + folds + resonance fire together
Start an open vowel with all three systems firing at once.
The rule
pass: 4/5self-rated “coordinated”
Three systems must engage at the same instant: airflow (breath), vocal-fold closure, and the vocal-tract shape (resonance). The emerald onset on the right shows all three rising together. The grey staggered onsets on the left are the two failure modes: breath-first staggers produce an aspirate whoosh; fold-first staggers produce a glottal click.
Hear it first
Three reference onsets on /a/. A coordinated start has no consonant in front of it — the vowel just appears. A breathy onset starts with an “ha” sound; a glottal one starts with a tiny click before the vowel.
What’s happening.Onset on an open vowel is harder than on a hum because there’s no consonant to mask the start. EBVP’s “coordinated onset” means the three systems engage within ~20 ms of each other — that’s the boundary between “clean” and “audibly off.” Untrained singers default to one failure mode or the other; trained singers find the centre by feel.
Why self-rated, why /a/. Mic-level detection of the 20 ms timing window across consumer hardware is unreliable; your ear catches it instantly. /a/ is the most laryngeally open vowel — it forces you to coordinate without help from a consonant. We pick targets on do/mi/sol from your speaking center so range isn’t a confound.
Why this is the foundation. Hum onset taught you to control the start with a consonant. This lesson removes the consonant. Every melisma, every vowel sustain, every phrase entry depends on this — including vowel-sustain-u, hum-to-vowel-transfer, and every later song-from-memory drill.
Session ahead
5 trials · listen → sing /a/ on do/mi/sol · self-rate each onset · hit 4 coordinated to advance.