Lisa Perks
Certified SLS Instructor
MORE ABOUT LISA PERKS
LISA PERKS - Certified SLS Instructor and Australian EAG member for Speech Level Singing International.
After a successful career as a live performer, recording artist and vocal coach in the UK, Lisa decided to follow her heart and move to Australia. Arriving in Melbourne in late 2005, Lisa opened her teaching studio in early 2006, and has enjoyed working with clients from all musical backgrounds, beginners and established Australian recording and stage artists.
Lisa holds a 1st Class BA Hons in Music performance and taught at the highly regarded Colchester institute for Music and Performance Arts (Uk) for 5 years, developing the Singer Songwriter programme.
Lisa began performing as a singer when she was just 14 and worked consistently over the years in many bands and production cabaret acts. After graduating from her degree Lisa released her critically acclaimed album "I'm in Love" on FMR Records, and toured extensively throughout the UK performing in many prestigious venues.
Lisa is one of only a handful of SLS Certified Teachers in Australia, and now holds the prestigious role of EAG, taking care of SLS teacher education for Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and New Zealand.
HOW I DISCOVERED SLS (by Lisa Perks)
Having sung as both amateur and professional over 14 years I suffered regular vocal difficulties. Endless bouts of sore throats, vocal fatigue got me looking for a good quality-singing teacher.
Over the years I have had some great teachers, but all were essentially vocal coaches and not “voice teachers”. Most of them had plenty of valuable advice about my performance and repertoire, but very little knowledge of how to get me through the difficulties I was having with my voice. This was very frustrating for me and often upsetting, as I knew I could sing, but also knew that the tool God had given me was running on borrowed time.
Time passed and as I matured I seemed to get a handle on my technique (or so I thought). At this stage I was due to release an album and was teaching regularly at a college, and so things were looking up.
Eventually the album was released and did OK, I started to acquire some gigs at notable venues across the UK, received radio airplay and reviews. I was also working with some of the best musicians around but as the months went by and more gigs came in I still in the back of my mind knew that I needed some guidance vocally, my voice was becoming uncontrollable, breathy, and wobbly. My listeners were totally unaware of my turmoil as I had a very good ability to cover up the imperfections, and a decent persona to hide behind whilst performing, but I knew that I could kid myself no longer. At that time I was just too scared to admit it… What would people think? My student’s… musicians… It was just too scary! It seemed that the years of bad technical advice and self-abuse had finally caught up with me.
After a while I confided in a good friend of mine, Karen Lane, another singer, and qualified speech therapist. She was very sympathetic and suggested that I looked into a technique she had heard about from America called Speech Level Singing. The culmination of a few phone lessons with level 5 instructor and CEO of Speech Level Singing Dave Stroud, led me to visit him at his San Francisco studio in September 2004 to do some intensive study. I was so amazed at the results the technique was achieving that whilst I was there I signed up as a pre-certified teacher and began training immediately.
After my visit to America I returned home to my students with a whole new set of skills that I was eager to pass on. I no longer felt like a fraud for teaching them, as I knew I had something valuable to pass on and indeed I watched each one flourish. For me this was one of the best feelings I had ever had as a teacher, and it was thanks to SLS, which has restored my faith in vocal technique.
I was advised to take some time out from performing in order to fully recover from my years of abuse, and to retrain the poor muscular condition that I built up over time. I now am at a stage where my voice is so much more stable, and I have the vocal range that I only dreamt of. Although I am still not performing, this is more through choice as I have a wonderful set of students that I love teaching. Doing this has become my passion. I feel as though I am equipped to teach with the best technique ever – Speech Level Singing!