Words you can actually understand

Here is a strange discovery waiting in your Sunday recordings: a take where every note is right, the tone rings, the timing sits on the beat — and the words are porridge. Welcome to the last skill of Module 3: diction, the art of being understood while singing. It is mercifully simple, because in singing the alphabet has two teams with two different jobs.

The proof takes five seconds: try to hold a long, musical "t". You cannot — it is over the instant it happens. Now hold an "ah" — you could hold it all day. Only vowels can be sustained on a pitch, which means every note you have ever held lived on a vowel. Singing is long vowels, decorated with quick consonants.