Root & Twig Sounds

We live in three separate cities - Zagreb (Croatia), Raleigh (USA) and Winston-Salem (USA). Our teammate Phil had worked on the soundscape format in years past. A.Y. Barker and Phil Dragash both come from a filmmaking background and a deep love of film scores, while Alexander Amadeo has composed for several full-length films, including A.Y. Barker’s senior thesis short film many years prior in university. What got us into audio was (perhaps ironically) making movies.

We had talked about the idea of taking a classic novel and creating it as a soundscape audiobook since early 2019. It wasn’t urgent on our to-list, but then the pandemic hit. At that point, everything else had shut down and Zoom became the communication lifeline. We realized that we could create this project entirely remote because of Zoom’s ingenious screen and audio sharing. What we lacked were the funds for the Hollywood-grade licenses for the sound effects. We put together a Kickstarter campaign and were blessed with the support needed to make it an official product. Two and half years later, the project was complete!

What is a “soundscape audiobook” you may be asking? Play the sample and you’ll know EXACTLY what we are going for. A word-for-word experience of the book filled with sound effects, atmospherics, original music (all done by Alexander!) and a wide-range of vocal character acting (all done by Phil!).

We imagine there are many of you, parents and children alike, who have heard of classic stories - either through the movie or Broadway musical adaptations - but have never sat down to read them due to the age of the story. We understand! For years we were the same. We believe a time has come where many families will want to understand where great stories come from and why certain stories stand the test of time.

We hope that families, particularly multi-generational ones will come to appreciate how books were written before the advent of film or TV. In Kipling’s time period, books were the king of the storytelling jungle. Authors in the 1800s particularly (Austen, Dumas, Dickens, Kipling, Shelley, Twain) wrote books as books, not something to necessarily be written as part of a vast ecosystem of storytelling products revolving around a single IP. Our wish is that you come to appreciate the difference in tone within the prose while it is produced in a way we hope rivals the quality of any Hollywood production.

A.Y. Barker speaking on this one - “My wife originally introduced me to the Yoto player through our desire as parents to limit screen time. I was in awe of the product’s design and intuitive button use for kids. My young daughter LOVES her player and I have enjoyed the ability to create custom stories for her from time to time. When I dug further into Yoto’s catalog, I could tell they took literature for children seriously, seeking a wide range of titles and age groups. Yoto combats the ever increasing fracturing of children’s attention spans due to screens with a product that brings the power of oral storytelling back into our current age.”

This is our first project being featured on the Yoto catalog. We hope for more opportunities in the future!

For those who are curious, we now have Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado and Jack London’s To Build a Fire now available on our company’s website at www.rootandtwigsound.com. Both of these are entirely done in the soundscape audiobook format.

We currently have two more soundscape audiobooks of classic short stories in production due to release before the end of 2024. In 2025 we hope to raise funds (or work in partnership with a larger company interested in investing in our work) for an ensemble-cast soundscape audiobook of another very well-known classic beloved around the world.