Frank Vaccariello found this opportunity to combine his love for audio production and reading out loud into one product, StoryTime Karaoke.

During Frank’s 16 years in radio broadcasting, he spent many hours in the production studio perfecting the craft of audio editing. Also over the years whenever Frank was asked to speak to classes about his profession, whether it be radio or marketing, he would always leave the class with one message.

READ!

“My final advice to every class I spoke with was to read. Pick up the daily newspaper or a weekly magazine, find that comic book series you like, look for a favorite author and just read. I used to drive my mom crazy with all the football books I read between 5th and 7th grade. Reading builds your vocabulary, your understanding of the world and takes you places you may never be able to physically go.”

As a parent, Frank made sure to read aloud to his daughter every night. So his advice now includes reading out loud to your children. In fact, research has shown how important that activity can be. Being read out loud to by a familiar voice is also important.

It’s because of this passion for reading that StoryTime Karaoke will donate a portion of each sale to literacy programming around the country.

When the idea of timing sound effects to classic children’s tales was mentioned to him, Frank immediately saw the potential. He understood how powerful associating sounds to words would be in helping the development of young brains.

Combining the story with sound effects and music also sounded like a more entertaining way to read to children.

Frank has been working in the public relations and marketing industry, now specializing in digital content, since 1999 after 16 years radio broadcasting and video production.

Karen Vilagi, Frank’s girlfriend, had long wanted to draw again. It was something she had enjoyed while in school, but life gets in the way of many plans.

Karen, now a grandmother, realized that StoryTime Karaoke would be a great opportunity to start exercising her creativity once again. She supplies the line drawings for the illustrations and works with Frank for the coloring.

She’s having fun seeing her work in print, on the net and even animated for promotional posts.

Karen currently works as a Nurse’s Aid (STNA) in a nursing home.

StoryTime Karaoke Magic

What goes into treating a story

After selecting the public domain story, Frank goes to work on the new soundtrack. He first searches the licensed production music libraries he subscribes to, trying to find the perfect mood-setting tune or tunes to fit the story.

He will then record himself reading the story to use for timing in the audio production software. Then the real work begins; trying to find the right sound effect for the right words. Frank has sound effect library subscriptions to three websites, so for the most part he’s covered. However, he has been known to create his own. (Humpty Dumpty’s splat took up almost a dozen eggs to get it right and you should have seen the balancing act to get the sound that goes along with “the dish ran away with the spoon.”)

All of those files then get laid out into Adobe Audition on a multi-track mixer. This was the part of radio broadcasting that Frank misses most. Spending hours behind audio production equipment. (He used to physically splice tape for most of his radio career, but now everything is so easy with electronic editing.)

The finished soundtrack itself is the most important piece to the puzzle.

In order to determine what artwork will be needed for any book to be published, Frank lays it out in Adobe InDesign. After spacing out the script and sound effect cues on the right side pages, it can now be seen what images should be created for the left side of the book. So Karen starts creating.

Meanwhile Frank pops the soundtrack and the script into the Karaoke Building software. He then manually forwards each word as they are to be read. This is often extremely time-consuming in order to get it just right. Once that is complete, he outputs it to a video format for further production.

Most stories will only need one illustration to represent it as they will not be published in book form. With Adobe Premiere Pro, Frank then mixes the karaoke builder video output with the newly colored image supplied by Karen. He throws in some graphics and copyright language, then renders it into a video that can be played on any device.

If the stories are going into book form, Karen draws the rest of the images. They get initial coloring in Adobe Photoshop, then turned back into black and white for the book. They then get inserted into the book file for printing. The file is then electronically transferred to the printer in Tennessee.

All of the karaoke videos created are then uploaded to the website so those with a StoryTeller Club Membership can enjoy new stories right away.

We like that idea that kids all over the country will get on the right foot growing up hearing parents, grandparents and even older siblings when hearing this special way to read to children.

After all that, you then get to enjoy these StoryTime Karaoke stories with the ones you love.