Weeks 1-2 · voice · clean hum onset on /m/
Start the hum cleanly. No pop, no whoosh.
The rule
pass: clean onset · 3s hold within ±50¢
Three amplitude envelopes overlaid. The emerald trace ramps smoothly from silence to a sustained plateau — that’s a coordinated onset. The grey traces are the two failures: a glottal pop spikes hard before the tone starts, and an aspirate whoosh leaks air for ~200 ms before any voicing. Both fail before the hold even begins.
Hear it first
Train the ear on the contrast before the voice. A clean hum sounds almost like it began before you noticed — no consonant burst, no breath. The pop and the whoosh are unmissable once you’ve heard them next to the clean version.
What’s happening.EBVP calls this “coordinated onset” — airflow and vocal-fold closure arrive at the same instant. The glottal pop is closure first, then breath (pressure builds behind closed folds and pops them open). The aspirate whoosh is breath first, then closure (air leaks out before the folds engage). Untrained singers default to one or the other; trained singers land both within ~20 ms.
Why a 3-second hold on /m/. A nasal consonant keeps the lips closed and the soft palate relaxed — the cleanest possible onset configuration. 3 seconds is short enough that you don’t need real breath control to last, long enough that the onset is the obvious failure point if there is one. ±50¢ catches the pitch dropping out of tune mid-hum.
Why this is the foundation. Every vowel sustain, every phrase entry, every melisma downstream starts with an onset. If yours is reliably popped or whooshed, those skills inherit the problem. Hum-to-vowel transfer, coordinated-onset on open vowels, and vowel sustain on /u/ all assume this is settled.
Session ahead
5 trials · listen → hum /m/ for 3 steady seconds · 5/5 clean onsets to advance.