Thank you Amy for your amazing work.  I am your number one fan!!!!

As we discussed off line yesterday, it is worth putting out the definitions we developed for Message Banking and Voice Banking.  We introduced the term message banking a few years ago because the term 'voice banking' was being used to mean many different things and my experience was that patients and referring physicians has widely varied expectations.   The definitions are below and in the link.    I've also added (part of same link) the link to 60 + pages representing messages that dozens of my patients with ALS have message banked and invited me to share with other people struggling to get started.  

Also, here in Boston we are working on a strategy to combine the efforts for voice and message banking, hoping that one  recording effort will support doing both.   I'll post on that along with audio file examples as soon as we've worked it out.  

Vocab and definitions:
LINK:   Preserving Legacy: being Proactive with ALS, Message Banking and Low Tech

Defintion.

 Voice Banking is a process of recording a large inventory of your speech that is then used to create a synthetic voice that approximates your natural voice. 

 

Done successfully, this would allow one to spell and create unique messages and then speak them through a synthesizer that approximates one’s natural speech.   The science behind this process continues to be in development with beta-versions of available software. The ModelTalker is one such project from the University of Delaware Speech Research Lab. The website is:    www.asel.udel.edu/speech/ModelTalker.html         

 

Message Banking with your own voice   digitally record and store words, phrases, sentences, personally meaningful sounds and/or stories using your natural voice, inflection and intonation.  

 

These messages are catalogued as .wav files and may then be linked to messages in a variety of augmentative communication technologies or sound storage files.  This will allow you to ‘retrieve’ a message and speak it in your own voice but does not allow you to create novel messages by spelling.    If you have recorded individual words, you may combine those words to create unique messages, although the output will sound more staccato than your natural speaking.     

 

Message Banking by proxy is the election of a proxy voice to do all recordings because issues of fatigue, pain or intelligibility may make it difficult for an individual to bank all messages.   In this case, the patient may still bank ‘legacy  messages’ but the majority will be banked by proxy.



John M. Costello
Director, Augmentative Communication Program and 
ACP ALS Service
Boston Children's Hospital
781.216.2220

781 216 2252 fax

www.childrenshospital.org/acp

FACEBOOK: www.facebook.org/acpchboston


From: Amy Roman <xxxxxx@sbcglobal.net>
Reply-To: National ALS Association AT Listserv <xxxxxx@alsa.simplelists.com>
Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2015 12:30 PM
To: National ALS Association AT Listserv <xxxxxx@alsa.simplelists.com>
Subject: Message Banking Made Easy with New, Free Online Tool

Hi everyone,
I am excited to share a new, free, online tool called MessageBanking.com.  It has resulted in more of my clients with ALS banking their voice and doing so with ease and much less training.  16 years as the speech therapist at the Forbes Norris ALS Research & Treatment Center has taught me the value of message banking but also made it clear that message banking can be confusing and overwhelming for many.  “What do I record?”, “What tools do I need?”, “What audio format should I record in?”, “What is the best bitrate”, “What is the best recorder?”, and “What do I do with the recordings when I am done?”

The developers at Clever Monkey and I created MessageBanking.com to help people through every step of the message banking process.  We included messages that people with ALS, caregivers and speech therapists have found to be useful and meaningful. 

MessageBanking.com is easy to use. A “Record” button below each message allows users to quickly record any message suggestions that resonate with them. Users can also create their own custom messages.  These might include signature or humorous remarks, work/interest related questions or comments, and messages specific to friends and loved ones.

A single “Download” button places all of the labeled messages in a folder on the user’s computer or storage device.  Later these messages can be transferred to any speech-generating device (e.g. Tobii’s I-Devices, Talk to Me Tech’s Zuvos, FRS’s Winslates, etc.) or to a text-to-speech app that plays audio files (e.g. digital Wav or MP3 files). 

Clever Monkey Development and I have also just released a Windows communication app for people with ALS called AlphaCore. Messages recorded in MessageBanking.com can easily be transferred to AlphaCore by clicking AlphaCore’s “Import” button.  With this single step, message buttons in AlphaCore will play their corresponding recordings.  This eliminates the time consuming steps of creating each message button and then adding the recording.  

Please check out MessageBanking.Com and let patients and families know about it.  I will be providing more info in the coming weeks on the AlphaCore text to speech app for Windows.  

Please contact me with any questions about MessageBanking.com or if you are interested in a demonstration copy of the AlphaCore app for your center. I’m also happy to share a client handout that explains Message and Voice Banking.
 
Sincerely,

Amy Roman, MS, CCC-SLP
Augmentative Communication Specialist

AmyandpALS.Com

Forbes Norris ALS Research and Treatment Center
2324 Sacramento Street
San Francisco, CA 94115