We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maude Theberge a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Maude, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
Yes, I have been a full time singer/musician/voice actress for more than 3 years now, but it’s something I’ve been doing for way longer part-time, almost 10 years now. It certainly wasn’t the same 10 years ago, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do this full time today. I completed my music and management studies and gained experience with my main project and teaching, and added more projects along the way. Eventually, with my full time 40-hours-a-week job, it became overwhelming to work and do all my other projects on the side, so I quit my day job to focus on my music and artistic projects full time, and doing so also brought me new occasions and projects. Basically, the fact that I freed my schedule to be available when occasions surfaced helped me do this full time. I am also very polyvalent: I sing, growl, play piano, violin and a bunch of other instruments, I write my texts and compose my music, I am a licensed music teacher, a voice actress, an actress, etc. and it’s because I know and do all these things that I am able to earn enough money to do this full time (and it’s still not easy). I could have sped up the process by freeing my schedule earlier, but at the same time my jobs and past experiences also brought me a lot of very useful information to manage my career today.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am mainly a singer and growler, meaning that I specialize in metal music and “screaming”, but I also am a pianist, violinist and multi-instrumentist, a voice actress, a teacher, a manager/administrative assistant, a model and much more.
My main artistic project is my metal band Sanguine Glacialis, in which I sing and play keyboard. I am also in the most famous metal choir in the world: Growlers Choir. I took part in many other musical projects such as Valfreya, Nachtmuse, TerminalCurse, Ulfhednar, etc. I am a session vocalist/violinist, and I also compose vocals, orchestrations and write lyrics: you can hire me to sing on your song or compose orchestrations or play violin or anything related, so because of this I’ve been featured in many, many projects as a guest.
Because I am a singer specializing in harsh vocal techniques, I am also a monster/creature voice actress for The Monster Factory, meaning that I voice monsters in video games, mostly.
My studies in management made me the administrative assistant of both the Growlers Choir and The Monster Factory. Not only am I a growler/voice actress, but I am also a part of the organisation and can work to push them further.
I have a Bachelor in music teaching and a lot of live/studio experience, so I teach music, mostly harsh vocals as it’s my speciality but also a lot of other instruments and aspects of the industry. My students come to me for a bunch of different goals, and I have beginner to advanced students.
For all these reasons and my very varied but specific background, I defintely stand out from others in this industry. I am a trained classical musician in the metal music world, which brought me a lot of recognition from my peers, and also from the classical community (with which I work through the Growlers Choir). With the other singers in my community, we’re carving a special place in history for harsh vocals: we’re studying and incorporating this technique at the academic level, and so my personal knowledge is particularly interesting to reunite these worlds and work in both of them.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Something very important and not talked about enough in society is how we see productivity. I live in North America, where productivity is the most important thing, with money (productivity = money, right?). So, as a society, we tend to work way too much and keep working on our own time to meet that productivity quota that is so rewarded here. We never stop to relax and take care of our bodies and minds.
So of course, as a creative with a full-time day job, I used to work my 40-hours-a-week and when I got home I would work on my creative projects. I would do this on the week-ends too: I spent my entire life working. I used to say that music is my passion so it’s not really working, but the truth is being a creative requires time and energy…and work. Playing/making music is work and so I worked almost non-stop in my waking hours. I tried slowing down my creative projects to have more time for myself, but discovered that I can’t. I am unable to stop playing/making music, it’s a need, like drinking water or having a roof over your head, and so I became so exhausted that I had burn outS and depressionS. It seemed like it was the only way for my body to tell me to stop.
I had to unlearn the toxic relation we have with productivity: you can’t always be 100% productive and it’s okay. Your mind and body need to rest to give the best, and the sentence “You can’t pour water from an empty cup” really resonated for me. It’s not completely unlearned, I still feel guilty when I rest because I feel exhausted, but it’s getting much better,
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Funny part is my band, Sanguine Glacialis, has a song named “Resilience”, from our latest album Maladaptive Daydreaming!
I think the story that better illustrates my resilience is when I was the only member left in Sanguine Glacialis.
The first line-up of the band changed a lot, there were a lot of musicians who left for different reasons, and eventually one of the founding members of the band chose to leave to better focus on his career, and because of that others chose to leave as well, leaving me alone with the project. Back then it was my only musical project, and it had been my baby for years, so I was completely destroyed by this. My personal life was also all over the place and I lived several traumatic things in only a few months…
Even through all this, I decided to try and find new members and become the only lead singer, because I thought it had too much potential to let it die. And even though it has not been easy and we still have line-up changes once a while, I was able to actually keep the band alive, and we released two albums since then!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.maudetheberge.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maude.theberge/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaudeThebergeSG/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maude-théberge/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MaudeTheberge
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/maude-theberge
Image Credits
Philippe Quinn
Marilyn Morningstar
Léo Denis
Thorium Mag
Simon Girard
Dark Moon Productions