Lisa Richards

By 3:00 PM on a Friday, it usually happens.You go to answer a phone call, speak to a colleague, or say hello to your partner, and your voice feels suddenly thin, weak and scratchy. You find yourself clearing your throat and using effort to make the sound come out. You are tired and your voice is tired.What Is Actually Happening in Your ThroatIn voice science, this end-of-week strain is known

 "I Can’t Carry a Tune": Why Tone Deafness is Mostly a MythMany adults carry around a persistent and loud voice in their head that says some variation of  "I can’t sing,"  or “I have a terrible voice” .This is the most common reason why…..Usually, they are singing in a group with other children and a teacher points them out and says, “Why don't you just mouth the words?" Oof….

A student once sat in my studio, looked at me like she'd just failed a life exam, and said: " I should be able to belt this D5, what is wrong with me?"I smiled and then deconstructed this common myth that makes singers feel like failures. Somewhere along the way, we decided that if you're not blasting a huge, chest-heavy high note straight into a microphone, you're failing at singing. Here's

A blank page isn't an artistic problem; it’s a judicial one. You are trying to sit as judge and jury over a song that hasn't even made it out of the gate yetWhen you sit down with your guitar or open a blank notebook, who is really in the room with you? If you find yourself crossing out a line before you even finish the verse, your analytical editor has taken control.. You are trying to prune a

In a city driven by public service, corporate leadership, and policy creation, teams need a shared rhythm. By stepping into a creative, vocal-focused space, your team can build a culture rooted in genuine trust and emotional intelligence.Moving from Competition to Shared HarmonyMany workplace dynamics thrive on rigid hierarchy, but these same frameworks can stifle communication. Process-oriented

The Executive Voice: Why Your Presence is a Physical ActLeadership isn’t just about the strategy you present; it’s about the sound of your conviction. In a city like Canberra, where communication is our primary currency, the ability to command a room is often the difference between a project being greenlit or ignored.I recently spent a day leading professional development for the presenting team

A more human kind of workplace workshop A lot of workplace workshops are trying very hard not to be boring.Some of them succeed.Some of them don’t.A lot of team-building still feels like something people get through rather than something they actually get anything from. Everyone turns up, everyone does their best, and then everyone goes back to work.That’s part of why I started offering corporate

December Is a Strange OnePeople are gradually slowing down — or winding up so they can collapse on Christmas Eve and call it for the winter break.Families unravel over Christmas.Drinking increases.Domestic violence increases.There’s pressure to buy the perfect gift — something that somehow surpasses last year in meaning or surprise — even though most people don’t need more things.There’s food

Lately, I’ve been thinking about why humans create. Yes there is creativity that builds a bridge or bakes a loaf of bread — this is what I call ‘ the useful kind  of creativity’ — but what about the kind that makes no clear logical sense? . The kind that calls sound out from the air or arranges colour on a canvas with no promise of function, profit, or survival benefit.We sculpt, sing, write

Hey there,I just started playing live again after a good 18 months away.And I didn’t take that break by choice.What do they say… Life is what happens while you are busy making plans? — an illness took my voice and left me with vocal nodes, then came a fractured wrist… and just as I was recovering, I fractured my tibial plateau. I had to stop. Everything.When you’re offstage for that long,