How to keep your voice free and healthy

The sound of the voice belongs to us like the color of our eyes. But we don't listen to it enough, we don't care for it or love it enough. For Irene Carpentier, her voice is her instrument. She is a trained soprano, but also a singing teacher and research assistant at the Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Siegen. She coaches students and teachers in the use of the voice and conducts research on the subject. Funded by the Heidehof Foundation, she is working on the project "Stimmt! Healthy teacher voice for better learning conditions in the classroom".

What can you do for your own voice? "It's important to have a free posture and free breathing," explains Irene Carpentier. The voice is a sensitive organ. "We know too little about how to use this organ properly and keep it healthy." Irene Carpentier studied this intensively during her singing studies. "Because I'm not a natural singer," she laughs. "My voice didn't just do what the lecturers wanted me to do, so I asked myself exactly how singing works. Why does it work well one day and not the next?"

She studied physiological singing technique and continued her studies in this direction with singing teacher Judith Lindenbaum at the University of Cologne. "When the body is in harmony, when all the muscles are doing what they are there for, then the voice will give the best of itself." Instead of scales, she did alternative singing exercises, "which could be described more as fitness training for the voice," explains Irene Carpentier, who comes from Belgium and has been working at the University of Siegen since 2019. She passes on a simplified version of these exercises, free of singing, to student teachers in coaching sessions.

As part of her research project, she found that almost 30 percent of trainee teachers have moderate to severe voice problems. "Coaching is therefore more likely to be used by those who feel that their voice doesn't always do what they want it to." Later in their careers, they will have to speak for up to six hours a day. "It's therefore important to know how to keep your voice healthy," says Irene Carpentier.

This not only includes vocal hygiene, but also recognizing the influence of emotions, posture, breathing, hormones, digestion and certain foods. "For example, I would never eat nuts before a concert or a lecture." Chocolate, on the other hand, is slimy. "However, these reactions are individual and also vary. You can learn to discover and change habits that promote your voice or not." That means practice. In her coaching sessions, Irene Carpentier shows you how. In group and individual training. "As the voice is made up of muscles, it takes a little longer training to retrain it." This is why the student teachers are accompanied for around three months.

A clear and present voice helps to convince and inspire others: in the classroom or in discussions with colleagues or superiors. It has also been scientifically proven that a healthy teacher's voice is an essential prerequisite for optimal speech processing by children in the classroom.

Irene Carpentier also offered coaching for female university employees at the suggestion of the University Gender Equality Office. The response was huge. There were twice as many registrations as places. "This shows how much interest there is in the topic," says the vocal coach, who also looked at the influence of hormones on the voice and changes during the menopause during the course.

When Irene Carpentier talks about her work, it sounds lively, cheerful and gentle. Simply beautiful to the ears. And what if you wanted to imitate that and speak like that yourself? She sighs: "Voice is identity and if I don't like my own voice or someone else doesn't like my voice, then for some people that is a reason to change their voice. Women try to speak lower because they think they will be taken more seriously." Others deliberately adopt a certain intonation. "There are actually trends, such as vocal fry, which makes the singing or speaking voice sound raspy and deliberately stretched." Irene Carpentier doesn't think much of it. "A voice sounds good when we use it freely and then it is also very powerful."

And what if you literally lose your voice from excitement during a lecture or a speech? Does the vocal coach have a trick? "Breathe out. When we are excited, the vocal regions are no longer supplied with blood as well. The throat becomes dry or tingles." The voice itself is not the problem, but the adrenaline rush that the body has to deal with. "So take a short breath in and a long breath out, then the voice can be controlled again - and we can also find our words better."

This article first appeared in issue 3/2025 of the university newspaper Querschnitt.