I came across this the other day, a really interesting article about the advances in speech technology for GPS navigation instructions and the impact on driver behaviour [read it here]. Basically, the author summarises the state of play and development for text-to-speech technologies and the use of computer generated voices in satnav. He concludes by illustrating how crude the systems still are in terms of getting emotion into the computer generated GPS voices. Contrast this with pre-recorded GPS voices, like our very own VoiceSkins, which manage to convey a huge range of emotions in each character’s satnav voice: Darth is threatening, seductive, menacing; Homer is goofy, defensive, self-important; Snoop is laconic, critical; Yoda is quizzical, authoritative, encouraging; C-3PO is concerned, obsequious.

Why would you want to listen to a voice that fails to keep your interest and that can’t reproduce anything like the emotional range of a real human voice? I’ve always wondered why you need a text-to-speech voice to tell you to ‘turn left into Acacia Avenue’, as:

a) you rarely have the ability to catch a street sign whilst driving, in which case the additional location specific addition is unnecessary;

b)if you need your GPS to guide you then you probably don’t know / don’t care about the name of the road you are about to turn left into – all you need is a simple instruction like, ‘take the next left’.

Text-to-speech will have to be able to reproduce a far richer emotional range than currently as well as provide the option of real celebrity GPS voices like Homer, Darth Vader, Snoop Dogg, Yoda and others before it will be a real contender IMHO!

Chris.

If you haven’t see the TomTom Darth Vader gps voice viral video, you’re in for a treat. It really is genuinely entertaining. You can see it here on YouTube. It has been an immense success, with total viewings just short of the 1,000,000 mark. And that’s only after 7 days!! TomTom have done a really good job with this and clearly know how to respect a premium satnav voice like Darth Vader and other real celebrity GPS voices too, such as Snoop Dogg and Homer. [Shameless plug - all are available here!] All these voices are official, authentic and really do sound excellent. Beware of imitations!

By the way, the official Darth Vader gps voice comes with John Williams’ music, TIE fighter fly by noises and light sabers embedded into the navigation commentary. This is GPS voices as you’ve never heard them before! Enjoy.

Colin.

The Homer voice and Snoop voice are soon to be joined by a very exciting new GPS voice, due for launch sometime very soon. We are very pleased with this satnav voice as it really pushes the boundaries of what we thought was possible for a celebrity gps voice! If you are not on the mailing list yet, then sign up at VoiceSkins.com and be the first to know when our next GPS voice is launched. It is going to be a very exciting summer if you have a TomTom GPS and want the best celebrity voices to accompany you on your holidays.

If you didn’t see Snoop on Larry King talking about his GPS voice, you missed a fun show! Larry loved the idea and even said he wants to create his own GPS voice. That would be cool…Now Snoop clearly loves his VoiceSkin and watching Jon Stewart’s, Larry King’s, Wendy Williams’s and Conan O’Brien’s responses to him speaking about it, we’d say they love it too! You can catch up on these videos at our YouTube channel here.

Anyhow, you can see Snoop discussing his GPS voice with Larry King here. And don’t forget to watch Snoop take Larry out for ride in the Snoopmobile here.

Snoop Dogg GPS Voice Recording Session

Snoop turns up a little later than expected (that’s ok – he’s a star!). He had fair reasons: he’d been up all night making a series of videos to support Malice in Wonderland and then onto his son’s football practice during the day. But the moment he arrives, he’s totally ready for work. A real trooper. I have to add, he is incredibly charismatic and very courteous too (damn tall as well). I feel a bit silly shaking his hand. Being the awkward Brit that I am, I probably said something like “ How do you do, Mr. Dogg.’ Ok, I didn’t but you know what I mean: exactly how does an uptight limey address an international rap megastar? Snoop takes it all in his stride, making us feel completely relaxed from the moment he walks in. My brother in law, Sam, is a big, big fan: and having met the man, I can see why he holds such appeal for so many all around the world.

We explain how we want the recording undertaken; Snoop and his manager, Ted, listen intently. Then Snoop goes into the booth and pretty much nails the entire thing in just under 2 hours. This is a record time for us. He seems to know exactly how we want things: 3 variants of everything with all the required pauses and gaps we need for our edit points. Perfect. No guidance needed. At one point we stop to let ProTools catch up but Snoop wants to keep on. The man never lets up.

When he has given us more than enough, including all his great scripted lines, he then starts to improvise (go to www.voiceskins.com and be in with a chance to win the signed script he used at the session!) Anyway, we all spend the next 20 minutes laughing, ‘rapt’ (sorry!) with admiration; he isn’t one of the biggest and best for no reason. The man is really, really funny and despite having been up for 24 hours, he’s brilliant at improvising. Some of it we can’t use and will remain in the archive forever. But watch out for a director’s cut of the Snoop GPS end of next year on www.voiceskins.com– who knows what you might get to hear?

Snoop finishes, puts his fists to mine (so that’s how you shake hands with Snoop!), signs an album for my brother-in-law, has some food and disappears with his manager Ted into another room to do more work. The guy just never stops. Grant and I sit around chatting about the session, the safest place to be in LA when the Big One hits (clue: not in the hills, according to Anthony from Cashmere Agency), whilst we wait for the adrenaline rush to subside.

Snoop GPS voice – Larry King show

Listening to the recording at the airport, I know we have an amazing TomTom GPS voice to share with you. We hope you think so too. Check out the videos ‘The making of the Snoop TomTom GPS celebrity voices’ and the video of Snoop’s VoiceSkin shown in demo mode. You can also see other cool GPS voice videos on our YouTube channel, here.

UPDATE: just heard about Snoop on Larry King talking about his Snoop GPS voice. A very cool little piece with Snoop in his Snoopmobile showing Larry his GPS voice. You can see it here.

And don’t forget to watch Snoop also discussing his involvement with VoiceSkins and his GPS voice on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, here.

Thanks for reading!

Chrizzle H.

LA in October is, well, like UK in high summer and how the Antarctic will be in 50 years (but without the botox). Perfect bleached sidewalks, blue skies and damn hot, in the 80s or so.! I recall how last year, when we were over to record the real Homer GPS voice at Fox sound studios it rained and temperatures hit the low 60s. To LA people, that is cold, whilst we were almost at the point of taking off our t-shirts (isn’t this what all Brits want to do when they go abroad?). We’d just got over the jet lag when Nick, our contact at Stampede, took us out for a power lunch at Café Primo on Sunset Boulevard. Sweaty, semi-beautiful people striding in from the ultra gym next door vying with surly waiting staff; you can’t get more LA than this (unless you consider the bluey white dentures I bought from a man in North Hollywood; only kidding, I’m staying with my true Brit tombstones).

Snoop wrote the additional stuff for the TomTom celebrity voices GPS script himself. He pulled together his Snoopisms and overlaid them perfectly onto our script. Reading it, we knew we had a hit! But we also expected him to improvise a little – after all he’s well known for this.

Grant and I recorded Snoop GPS voice at Conway, where Guns n Roses made ‘Use Your Illusion I & II’, and U2 recorded ‘Rattle and Hum’ (gold discs up on the wall always impress an ex-muso like me). A really lovely place set back in quiet residential street; inside there is a walled garden with loads of trees nestled between the 3 studio complexes. I can see why you’d want to record your difficult second album(s) here. Our ops director, Colin, didn’t make it to the session, sadly. Food poisoning. Raw fish never gives me any problems. Still, there has to be some payback for having lunch earlier in the day in a Malibu café overlooking glorious pacific waves.

Best, Chrizzle…. Continue Reading

So, here you have it: big Snoop Dogg lends his voice to TomTom GPS! We were absolutely thrilled to be approached by Snoop’s management company, Stampede: Snoop had heard all about how we created the real Homer Simpson celebrity voice for TomTom, and wanted to be the first real megastar on GPS. What a coup! We’d just released Homer and were looking at a number of opportunities – all cool but most likely to take a while to put together. One of the things I liked about Snoop and his team is how easy they all were to work with. We had a deal and a recording within 4 months from flash to bang! Now that is quick.

Grant, our creative guy, myself and Colin all listened to a lot of Snoop – interviews, music, musings – everything we could find before setting off to La La land. We immersed ourselves in his speech habits and idiosyncratic way of speaking and rapping. We wanted to find a level for the Snoop Dogg TomTom celebrity voices (for there are three: the US version and the UK and EU versions). What you don’t want is something mechanical and wooden that doesn’t reflect the celebrity’s character and style of vocal delivery. iFizzle, Snoop’s cool iPhone app (effectively a ‘soundboard’ containing well known Snoop phrases, BowWowWow, yippee-yi-yippee-yay and the like) was a good touch point; here was Snoop playfully delivering well loved Snoopisms in that wonderful warm drawl. This was it – we had it. We waited for the day we’d fly to LA to meet Snoop and record his voice…read about the journey to LA and the recording session in parts 2 & 3 shortly.

Best, Chrizzle.