Q&A with Lisa Popeil

Q & A WITH IES GUEST FACULTY Lisa Popeil

Sweet Adelines International Education Symposium (IES) guest faculty Lisa Popeil has made singing her life’s work, developing the VoiceWorks® Method, which she uses in her coaching and teaching of singers from beginners to professionals. We caught up with Lisa shortly after she finished a tour with popular parody singer “Weird Al” Yankovic to find out what Sweet Adelines can expect when they meet her in San Antonio!

What excites you about teaching our members?

What led you to make a career of singing?

My mother had received no formal education, and she wanted to give me every educational opportunity. I started piano at 4, then went to a theatrical school at 6 for dance and singing. By the time I was 7, I was losing my voice, so my mother found a classical voice teacher for me. Even from that early age, I thought that learning how to sing was infinitely fascinating. I’m constantly learning, doing research, discovering new things, and learning how to share that information with any age, any level so that they can experience the joy of having a voice that works for them.

Have you ever sung barbershop harmony?

When I was 20, I was asked to be the director of a small Sweet Adelines chorus in Santa Clarita, California. I loved the music, the sense of camaraderie, and how competition inspires people to continue to be better. So, yes, I actually have more than a passing acquaintance with barbershop and Sweet Adelines singing!

I often meet people who are passionate about the science behind singing and how it's taught but who don't actually sing and rarely, if ever, perform. So, being able to share my life's work with people who are not only fascinated by singing but are actually doing it on a regular basis is a great gift for me. When I teach, I like to create an atmosphere of performance, where it’s fun. One of the things I love about Sweet Adelines is this overriding sense of joy and also this focus on education, so it's really a perfect fit for me. I never want to lose the magic of singing and what it's really there for, which is to inspire and heal people, not only the audience but ourselves. It’s what I live for.

What will our members take home with them after your classes?

I develop techniques that lead to what I call the three C's: Control, Consistency, and Confidence. When you know how to Control your voice, it is consistent for you. Consistency is important because naturally talented singers often are inconsistent. They don’t know why they have a good day or a bad day, and this leads to the third C, which is Confidence. It’s hard to feel confident in your voice when you feel like it can fail you one day or be amazing another day, all without knowing why. I try to present this material in easy-to-understand terms so you can get results right away without having to do a lot of vocal exercising. My methods are based on knowledge of what to do to make a change or improvement, or to solve a vocal problem.

How did you maintain vocal health while on tour with “Weird Al” Yankovic?

We were using our voices to talk all day, and the show is only an hour and a half long, so even though we were singing in all different styles, there were no problems whatsoever. The hard part about touring is the sleeping issue. You're sleeping on a tour bus, and then you may have to get up at 3 in the morning to bundle up into your hotel room. And meeting so many people and shaking so many hands, it's hard to not get ill. It's really more about maintaining physical health. But all in all, I was much healthier than I thought I'd be. It was just a magical experience of camaraderie and making great music every night to thousands and thousands of people, with a full orchestra too. But having alone time, quiet time, was also important. Balancing physical and mental health was one of the keys, I think.

What is the one skill that has the most impact on the voice?

Support. I’ve found that when you do this precise support method I’ve developed involving the chest, the ribs, the upper belly and the lower belly, you can do almost anything. I can wake up in the middle of the night and sing a high C with no trouble. It allows me to take chest voice up high comfortably, easily. It helps pitch. It increases the ability to hold things out a long time. It’s sort of a one stop shop for vocal problems.

How long does it take to warm up a voice so that it's ready to sing freely?

Not as long as one might think. My approach is that stretching the body is a very important warmup, so I teach a whole stretching series just for singers. I like to establish posture and warm up my support muscles. That takes 30 seconds. Then I'll do a few simple exercises to see how my voice is feeling, a diagnostic rather than a precise list of exercises. I make sure my register transition is smooth going up and down. If it isn't, I'll warm up with some hums or light lip trills and check my vibrato. If it's too slow, that tells me I need to warm up more, and I'll use some short phrases. Then I have a little exercise to diagnose my belting sound. If it's easy to do, I'm good to go. I'm from the “save it for the stage” school of thought when it comes to vocal warmup. I think that healthy speaking, adequate vocal rest, and knowing your voice and how to diagnose your voice are key skills for warmup.

What techniques do you use for performance anxiety?

Personally, I don’t have performance anxiety, but for my students who do, I have used a method for 30 years which is nothing short of miraculous. It’s a tapping method using acupressure called Thought Field Therapy (TFT). I also use some elements of an offshoot of TFT called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and another approach called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). It works in as little as 30 seconds and as much as eight minutes. It works on most people, and it allows people who love to perform to do it without all those nervous feelings. In one of my workshops I'll demonstrate it. It’s just stunning how it works.

How does singing change lives?

Singing has the potential to aid in people’s confidence, to enhance their charisma. It allows people to unload their emotions. Many singers who I work with, young singers in particular, just must sing. They need to sing to self-soothe and to feel loved and to love themselves. Singing has a very ancient and deep root in community. There’s a divine element to it, a connection to the universe feeling, a kind of ecstasy, that is important to all of us so we don’t feel alone and so we don’t succumb to sadness. I think singing brings joy, and that’s a good thing.