Television jingles generally
can’t be credited with
changing someone’s
life; usually the earworm
is responsible for your
knowledge of an obscure
phone number to a plumbing
company, but that’s about it.
For a young Karen Jacobsen
however, it was the beginning
of her passion for music and
voice work.
“I knew the words and tune
to every jingle on TV when I
was a kid,” Jacobsen shared.
“My fascination for music
started early, and my parents
encouraged it.”
Dedication to her craft
translated into years of voice
lessons, musical productions,
and voice work that led
Jacobsen to be featured
in several commercials.
And while conquering the
Australian market was no
mean feat, Karen’s aspirations
had her looking to the States
and “making it big” like her
childhood hero, Olivia
Newton John.
But making it big in the
United States took a
completely different form
when she answered an ad
asking for a young Australian
woman living in New York to
do three weeks of voice work.“I knew this job was for me
the second I saw it,” she said.
For those three weeks,
Jacobsen spent four hours a
day reading from a script the
size of a phone book. The rest
of the time she spent writing
music and resting her voice
for the next day. She moved
on to other jobs after, not
thinking much about what
her voice work would be used
for—more often than not,
those whose voices are used
for audio don’t know where
or how their recordings will
be used.
It was a big shock, then, for
Jacobsen, who received a call
from a friend in her native
country, telling her that her
voice was coming out of
one of the name-brand GPS
devices on the market. Since
then, Jacobsen’s voice has
been used in 400 million
devices worldwide, including
the voice of Siri for the
Apple iPhone in Australia.
“For the longest time I was a
Luddite, and now my voice
is in millions upon millions
of tech devices,” she joked.
“I’ll often be in the car with
friends and they’ll have their
GPS devices on, and as my
voice is guiding them around
they’ll turn to me and ‘verify’
the directions. My child addsthe word, ‘dad’ after each
line of directions from a GPS
device, as if I’m telling my
husband specifically where
to go. It’s quite funny to
experience.”I was fascinated by how the
sizeable script she read turned
into directions for nearly
every corner of the globe.
And although she admitted
she was not well-versed in
technology, Jacobsen could
break the process down.
“The script was so large
because they weren’t looking
for specific words, but sounds
of syllables. Before I began
reading, engineers had to
calculate the easiest way
to capture all of the sounds
necessary; I couldn’t have
read every English word in
creation—I’d still be recording.
Once my recording was
complete, they would chop up
the words, extract the sound
of the syllables, and then
paste them together.”
The result? You get home
safe despite being lost and in
a bad-looking neighbourhood
at night. Granted, Jacobsen
can’t take too much credit
the mechanics of it, but her
soothing voice gets you
through the ordeal with
aplomb.SUCCESS
38 | VENTURE Success | June 2018