What you are training
The five pure vowels, ee, eh, ah, oh, oo, are the shapes every sung word is built from, and holding one steady is harder than it sounds. On a long note the jaw creeps, the tongue rises, and "ah" turns into something between "ah" and "uh" without the singer noticing; the listener hears it as a dull or unfocused tone. Sustaining a pure vowel trains the shape to stay put, which is what makes a long note ring instead of fade. This exercise plays a reference pitch, asks you to hold each vowel for a few seconds, and tracks whether the pitch stays centred as the vowel goes on. Pitch drift on a sustain is usually a vowel drift in disguise. Hold each one, keep the shape, and listen for the moment the tone opens up.
How to do it
- Sustain each vowel for 4 beats on the reference pitch:
- ee [i] - eh [ɛ] - ah [ɑ] - oh [o] - oo [u]
- Keep the jaw dropped on "ah" and "oh".
- Move up by half step and repeat the cycle.
Pure vowels are the colors of singing. Every word you sing is shaped by these 5 sounds. Own them individually before combining them.
After this exercise, the plan: The daily plan follows pure vowels with vowel modification on scales, the adjustment that keeps the shape open as the pitch rises.
If singing hurts, stop. Pain, hoarseness, extra effort, loss of range, or repeated throat clearing that lasts more than a day is a reason to see an ENT or laryngologist, or a speech-language pathologist who specializes in voice. It is not a reason to practice harder.