The Tumbleweird Narration Project provides real human voice narration to articles and stories at tumbleweird.org. Tumbleweird has a mission to “serve the truly powerful: the underdogs, the misfits, the outsiders, the newcomers, those on the margins, and the ones who defy the status quo.”
We narrate their stories.
This is a volunteer effort, contributing to community-driven initiatives and information for Eastern Washington. Tumbleweird has worked with a local group to make stories and articles more accessible to sight-impaired people by retooling the website to be compatible with screen-readers. But as we know, AI voices are a poor substitute for the rich experience of listening to a human narrator. We are committed to bringing current events and community information to everyone who needs and enjoys the narration experience, with a human touch.
Tumbleweird hopes to be able to offer you and other narrators an opportunity to practice the craft of narration in a professional setting to build experience at the beginning of your career or pivot from a different area of voice over. In many cases, it’s difficult for new narrators to find good projects they can credit as professional work. Your work on Tumbleweird will have your professional name (or pseudonym) read into the narration and a link will be placed on the story page to your website or social media. We hope this will be a good launching point for your narration career, and look forward to seeing all the awesome things you do in the future!
Requirements & Technical Specifications
At this time, we are not set up to provide a great amount of technical support for your booth or DAW. In order to participate in narration for Tumbleweird, you should be able to produce clean, professional quality finished audio. The following standards (also used by ACX) and equipment are expected to be used:
- Consistent in overall sound and formatting
- Eliminate plosives, mic pops, mouse clicks, excessive mouth noise, and outtakes
- Noise floor no higher than -60dB
- XLR microphone
- Sound treated recording space
- Delivery of mp3 file ready for publishing without further processing or audio engineering
More Information
If you are interested in joining the narration team, please start by filling out our agreement. You'll receive information about setting up a time to videochat with program manager Shae Strong to get started.
Pozotron Shout Out
We'd like to thank our friends at Pozotron for their support in making our process a little easier and our deadlines a little less stressful. Check them out for brilliant proof listening software!
