Can I create custom sentences, for instance, with names of family and friends? Can I do “message banking”?

Yes: One way to make sure that the names of people and places that are important to you are correctly pronounced is to record them in custom sentences. We have added a Custom Inventory to our web recorder that will allow you to do this. To select the Custom Inventory, click “Settings” at the top of the page, and select “custom” as the inventory name. Note that this is a different inventory than the one you record our prescribed set of sentences in (the “standard” or “Gen3” inventories). This inventory will have a pre-set list of only 10 sentences. At the top of the screen, you will find a link to “Add Custom Sentences”, which takes you to the Custom Inventory Form.

In this form, you may enter names such as the names of People, Places, or Things that are important to you. You may also enter whole Phrases or Sentences (i.e. “messages”) that you would like to record. Words and sentences you record will usually sound just like your recorded speech when you later try to synthesize them with your ModelTalker voice. Each of the words in the People, Places, and Things categories you enter will be embedded in three or four different sentences for you to record. So be aware that if you enter, for example, 20 words, you will have 80 sentences to record with those words. We advise you to stick to only the most important words, or ones that are difficult to spell/pronounce. It is unnecessary to list common English words.

Also note that your custom sentences will be intermingled together with your prescribed sentences from the other inventories when we build your voice. So it is important to record them the same care and the same voice quality (e.g. volume, pitch, speed, etc.) as your other sentences, and to record the sentences exactly as they are presented.

You can also enter custom material if you are recording with MTVR. The instructions are located in the MTVR Help document. Start MTVR and select Help > Contents then click the [+] next to “Recording your voice”. The next-to-last item in the list you will see describes how to enter custom sentences in MTVR.