Voices of TA-DA!: how I met this gorgeous baritone voice

By Michelle Glorieux, Founder and CEO of TA-DA! Language Productions

Occupational hazard: when you’re working on ‘talking books’ featuring native speakers to help kids learn languages, you really start to notice the voices around you, whether at the park’s playground, the grocery store, or even on what began for me as a routine phone call to my health care provider.

Our true labor of love, the first-of-its-kind talking picture dictionary (where the touch of the images with your finger on actual paper emits clear, crisp sound), is currently being finalized to hit shelves in 2020.

As a teacher of languages on three different continents, the mother of a 5-year old trilingual, and a struggling student of language myself, this book has been a lifetime in the making. I wanted an easy, fun and effective way to bring an arsenal of vocabulary to language learners. In my experience, the more words we know, the easier the rest will follow.

This first dictionary is in American English and will have 720 words. Arsenal of vocabulary achieved? Check.

Furthermore, kids will be able to clearly hear (and learn from) more than a dozen different native speakers pronounce each and every word in the book.

In an effort to represent the richness of any one language, we purposefully sought out a large variety of different kinds of native voices, including those of men, women and children of various ages speaking how we really talk - and thus naturally pronouncing words in different velocity, pitch and stress. We also brought on a Harvard/Berkeley linguist to demonstrate a clear, phonetic pronunciation. We didn’t want to get too far down the road of the complexities of dialect (instead opting for more middle-of-the-road pronunciations), but again, we did want to be sure to include all kinds of voices, resulting in a rich, aural linguistic reference of the (American) English language.

Our sound engineer and I were extremely proud of the sampling that had come together, but we were aware of something missing amongst our recorded voices: a true, deep, resonating baritone. The dictionary needed the gravitas that comes with that tone of voice. 

Enter serendipity, which has been a friend and guiding force for TA-DA! the last four years as we’ve built this company from the ground up.

What was initially an unexciting call to my insurance company for medical information immediately turned into an electrifying, hair raising moment. That voice…

I’m talking the next best thing to James Earl Jones himself. As he was proposing potential family doctors in my area, all I could think about was this guy being in our dictionary. But would it be appropriate? Weird?

Nah! I’m the founder of a startup. I’ve been compelled to do much less kosher.  

Not only did he say yes, but he was willing to help a bootstrapping company with a non-existent budget and drive an hour to boot to meet me at a recording studio. (Can we say ‘angel’?)

So we set the date, I flew to his city, and I got to meet “the voice”— Orlando Romero.

We met as the sun was rising, bright and early on a Saturday morning. Not only was Orlando accommodating and friendly, he was the consummate professional. It truly was hard to believe he had never done voice work before. This man just understood sound recording. He instinctively knew what needed to be done. It was a match made in heaven.

A tall, burly man, I found Orlando focused and reserved. He was a bit shy about taking photos at first, but he ultimately allowed me to.

Orlando grew up in Utah with family living in Puerto Rico. He visits them often, but mentioned he regrettably can not speak Spanish well. He currently works for a physician services company doing patient registration and scheduling. Orlando said many people throughout his life have commended him on his voice, but he never thought about how to use it to its full potential. Recording for TA-DA! was the first time he let his voice be heard in such a public manner.

When asked what motivated him to help out a startup, Orlando said he simply enjoyed helping people and believed books like these would help people, especially families like his, to communicate better.

You’ll be able to ‘meet’ Orlando in our upcoming English Talking Picture Dictionary.

Thank you, Orlando. Your voice is as amazing as you are.