Do you have a Geordie/County Durham accent? Do you like to talk a lot? Lost Voice Guy, alias Lee Ridley, is looking for someone who would like to donate their voice for him to use on his iPad.
The team at CereProc (www.cereproc.com) have very kindly offered to tailor make Lee’s very own personal Geordie accent so that he doesn’t have to sound like a posh version of Robocop anymore (although he’ll miss telling that joke!).
Lee Ridley is looking for volunteer who is willing to donate their voice to him. The process is quite simple and would involve the person with the chosen voice spending a total of around eight hours in a recording studio, while CereProc record all the sounds they need to create Lee’s new voice.
Lee Ridley said: "I think it would make a massive difference if I could sound more like my friends and family. I’m proud of being from the north east, so I want to reflect that in my accent. I don’t think my current voice represents where I am from. And It isn’t exactly the voice that i would have had, if i wasn’t disabled. my family are from Consett, in County Durham, so I’d like to sound as close as I can to them. I definitely don’t want to sound like any of my mates though. I think that would just be too weird if we were both talking to each other in the same voice. So, I’d prefer using a stranger’s voice."
Paul Welham (CereProc’s Chairman & Chief Executive Officer) commented: "I first met Lee in person two years ago at the Nation Star School near Cheltenham. He was a great inspiration to the disabled students there, as he showed that having a disability does not stop you from being successful and having a fulfilling life.
Working with Lee will be an opportunity for a greater audience to see how our technology can be used to create regional accents to give him and others their own accent to talk with, rather than a bland BBC accent that many are forced to use. To hear Lee speak with a Geordie accent has been an ambition of mine since we first met.”
The ideal voice would be a male voice from someone who is aged between 30 and 40 and has a mild Geordie/County Durham accent (Lee’s family are from Consett).
Anyone wishing to take part should make an audio recording of themself reading a certain paragraph from Lee’s book and send the audio file to [email protected]. Lee will then listen to all the entries and select the one that he thinks would suit him best.
