Part 2

How would you describe the physical sensation of singing? [Where do you feel the voice, do you have a visual sensation/representation, is there a sense of release or tension etc …]

It’s never really the same, that’s what makes it so fascinating I think. When I’m performing I focus a lot on expansion, especially in the lower body, to the back and to the sides and into the floor. I tend to lose my grounding sometimes so it helps me to focus on that. I also tend to feel a lot happening inside my mouth, I try to be aware of the space there.

But so much of singing is imagination of course, and often the emotion helps us get that extra 10% out of the voice that is hard to reach purely using technique.

What kind of musical settings and situations do you think are ideal for your own voice?

Even though performing for a big audience is so thrilling and that level of energy from the crowd can make you feel like a rock star, I do especially cherish small, intimate spaces.

I think one of my biggest assets is conveying emotion and telling stories, and I love the personal connection that a small crowd gives me.

We have a speaking voice and a singing voice. Do these feel like they are natural extensions of each other, ends on a spectrum or different in kind?

I think all of the above can be true. For me, my speaking voice is like ground zero, the starting point for singing.

I suppose you could also see it as one of many colours on the vocal spectrum.

From whispers to screams, from different colours to dynamics, what are the potentials and limits of your voice? How much of your vocal performance can and do you want to control?

I think performing live brings out more of my voice than I can ever experience in the rehearsal room. I am no longer the only player that influences my voice - both my fellow musicians and the audience are important factors that shape the experience and thereby my sound.

While I need to stay in control up to a certain point, just so I can protect my voice as well as my psyche and to ensure a certain standard of quality for the audience, I also try to embrace that percentage of risk that the adrenaline and human exchange bring. It‘s what keeps me on my toes and makes every performance feel special and personal.

I’d love to learn more vocal techniques, like overtone singing and beatboxing. There’s just so much to discover! I really like using vocal flips (as in yodelling) - what used to be mainly a technical difficulty I struggled with has now become a fun feature in my voice that I cherish.

When you're writing song lyrics, do you sense or see a connection between your voice and the text? Does it need to feel and sound “good” or “right” to sing certain words? What's your perspective in this regard of singing someone else's songs versus your own?

For my new album My Vreemde Kind I wrote in my mother tongue Afrikaans for the first time and it was such an eye-opening experience.

Even though I love singing in different languages I was surprised to find how special singing in Afrikaans felt. Every language sits differently in the voice, but here the emotional connection was so deep and intuitive, I discovered a new kind of openness in my voice which surprised me.

Concerning other people‘s lyrics vs. my own, in general, singing the words I wrote myself does feel more personal, I also get more nervous performing my own songs.

As a writer I tend to try and squeeze too many words into every line, influenced by Joni Mitchell perhaps. Her lyrics are sort of stream-of-consciousness and conversational, very wordy, but it works so well somehow and is just pure poetry to me. 



But sometimes when I try and sing my own new lyrics, the kinks show up immediately and I know which parts to edit, where to give myself more room to breathe. Figuring out how to say what you want to say in as few words as possible is a major challenge I think most songwriters face. So in that way how the lyrics feel in my voice does influence the writing a lot.

I was talking about Bob Dylan in an earlier question and how he says that songs are made to be sung, not read. This I find to be so true in my own writing as well.

Strain is a particularly serious issue for many vocalists. How do you take care of your voice? Are there recipes or techniques to get a damaged voice back in shape?

Every body and voice is different, so I can only speak for myself. Alcohol is a huge no-go for me when I have to sing, even the day before, it just really dries me out and my voice never feels good after I’ve been drinking. So I tend to avoid that up to a day or two before performing or rehearsing.

During flu season I wear a mask on public transport or when I’m around people who have a cold, regularly moisturise my nose on the inside (it sounds gross but it helps!) and drink lots of water. And I’m one of those people who really needs to warm up their voice and body, so I try to be disciplined with that.

Lately I’ve been trying to be more gentle on myself and try not to cram too many vocally intense hours into a day. It’s not always possible, but I try to avoid double-gig-days and keep vocal rehearsals shorter.

I’m not a doctor of course, so I’m always a bit hesitant to give advice on things like vocal strain. I think the best recipe for a tired or damaged voice is probably rest: both vocal rest and sleep, combined with lots of fluids. But it really depends on how serious the damage is, your ENT doctor really is your best friend in these cases and when something feels off it’s better to be safe than sorry and go for a check-up.

How has technology, such as autotune or effect processing, impacted singing? Has it been a concrete influence on your own approach?

I’m a bit of an old-fashioned analogue girl in that respect, so I haven’t dabbled in vocal effects much to be honest. But people are creating amazing work using these tools and I’m all for experimentation!

There is one song on my album though that I mentioned earlier, “Vingers Van Sand“, which is almost purely a-capella, but where Sixtus Preiss manipulated some of the vocal tracks electronically to create a kind of eerie, ghost-like quality. What I love about it is that everything electronic on the track was created using my voice, so it still feels very organic to me.



For recording engineers, the human voice remains a tricky element to capture. What, from your perspective, makes voices sound great on record and in a live setting?

Obviously a good mic is important, but also just the right mic for that particular voice. I really like Austrian Audio, especially for recording. Sixtus Preiss, who recorded my album, builds his own mics, which also sound fantastic. And of course good mic technique is really important too, especially when singing live.

I try to see the mic as an extension of my body. The more actively I feel the connection between myself, the mic and the room the better I find the sound to be, even in tricky acoustic situations.

Motherese may have been the origin of music, and singing is possibly the earliest form of musical expression, and culture in general. How connected is the human voice to your own sense of wellbeing, your creativity, and society as a whole?

For me personally, my voice is such an essential part of my identity.

I wonder sometimes how I’d feel if I ever seriously damaged my voice, or even when my voice inevitably changes with age. I suppose I’ll just have to deal with it when the time comes and hope that I’ve grown enough as a person to take those kinds of changes with grace. I think the fact that our instrument is so intertwined with our own sense of self can be both a blessing and a curse.

The wonderful part is: singing is the most natural and joyful way of expressing myself and so far I haven’t found anything that compares to it. Everything I’ve learned about singing and the psyche has deepened my belief that singing is one of the most incredible acts of healing and connection that’s available to us as humans. I recently learned that when people sing together, their heartbeats actually sync up! Everyone who’s ever sang in a choir has probably sensed that feeling of deep oneness.

So I think that just like allowing yourself to truly love someone brings an innate risk of ending in pain and suffering, it‘s also one of the most beautiful things in the world and what makes life worth living. As Carole King said: “You gotta take the bitter with the sweet.“