Weeks 1-2 · voice · /u/ sustain
Hold one vowel. Don’t let the pitch drift.
The rule
pass: pitch SD ≤ 30¢ · drift ≤ 8 dB · 4 s
4 seconds of /u/. The emerald band is the ±30¢ tolerance window. The green trace passes — it settles fast and stays inside. The grey trace fails — it walks out of the band before 4 s. The first 300 ms is excluded (onset settling) from the standard deviation.
Hear it first
Listen to 4 seconds of a clean /u/ at a comfortable pitch, then 4 seconds of a drifty one. The difference is the test.
What’s happening./u/ is the most laryngeally simple vowel — small tongue movement, lips rounded, vocal tract long and stable. That stability is what makes it the right test of pitch and volume control: most of what wobbles isn’t the vowel, it’s your voice. Untrained singers hold pitch for 1-2 s before subglottal pressure shifts and the larynx starts to slide.
Why 4 seconds, why 30 cents. 4seconds is short enough to be achievable in week one but long enough to expose drift you wouldn’t feel. 30¢ standard deviation is tighter than the pitch-matching tolerance (50¢) because this is sustained-tone work, not landing — and 8 dB amplitude drift catches the volume-fade failure that pitch-only scoring misses.
Why this is the foundation. Every sustained-tone task downstream — phrasing, dynamic control, vibrato, harmony entry — assumes you can hold a single vowel steady. If you can’t do this for 4 seconds, those skills will never settle.
Session ahead
5 trials · 4-second hold each · pitch centred on your P50 · hit 5 for mastery.