full-fledged pidgin


seeking voice talent

Posted in computational, phonetics, qrp, speech synthesis by clunis on the July 31st, 2007

I’m currently looking for someone who might be interested in working with me on a speech synthesis research project. The gig would involve some time in the recording studio recording transcripts intended to elicit as-nearly-complete-as-possible a selection of English speech sounds in different contexts, different emotional conditions, and at different paces. Speaker should be comfortable reading copy into a mic (acting experience/training a huge plus), interested in learning something about how his/her vocal tract works, and willing to participate in a number of articulatory measurements (think tubes, electrodes, ultrasound wand placed submentally (beneath your jaw)) for surprisingly little compensation. :)

There would be two sessions:

  1. Session 1: high-quality sound recording as described above.
  2. Session 2: recording of same transcripts in a phonetics laboratory with various instrumentation installed and attached.

When we’re done you get an open-source speech synthesizer that talks in your voice. Please comment or e-mail me if you’re interested (or know someone who might be).