SongInvention

When words can't express, SongInvention can.

Competitive gift-giving. We all do it, right? Who doesn't want to give the best present at the party?

A gift can say “I remember having a one-year-old, and this will make your life easier.” A gift can say “I know how to make you smile.”

The time it takes to find a gift can say: “Maybe I can’t fix everything that hurts, but BY GOD I can find this rare out-of-print book, signed by the author."

What if your gift could literally say what you’ve been wanting to say? It can, when your gift is a custom song.

Love, sympathy, commiseration, joy – whenever you struggle to find the words - struggle no more, because music can say anything.

While we're at it, your business deserves a gift too. With a theme song for your brand, you'll get instant memorability and emotional appeal no advertising can match.

Kristi McGarity, owner

Back in 2006 Kristi founded the Music Technology degree program at Montana State University, building a new major for aspiring composers and sound engineers. In her intro class for Music Tech majors, the final project was to write a piece of music that tells a story. It was like Christmas morning every semester, hearing the stories everyone considered important enough to set to music.

Long before that, Kristi made happy synthpop under the name Opposite Day. (Those who hung around Detroit in the summer of 1995 might remember her early radio hit "Billy Ray.") She earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Michigan, and MM and DMA degrees in music composition from The University of Texas at Austin. As an academic composer, she has produced genre-crossing audio art exploring voices of real people: children living in shelters, laid-off workers, her grandfather's sermons from his small Texas church, science fiction author Octavia Butler, and many more.

Now back in Texas with her husband and son, Kristi has launched a new business setting real-life stories to music. Her custom songs celebrate special people, commemorate events, and enhance websites. She also produces promotional music for businesses and nonprofits.

Want to hear? Listen now

Kristi and Sam work with a network of professional musicians, local and nationwide, to achieve a high-quality professional recording of every custom song.

Sam Heuck, webmaster and recording engineer

Sam Heuck was born in Montana, and grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. Being a rancher's son taught him to work hard, think of creative solutions to problems, and get the job done no matter what. Software and technology seem to be breeding grounds for unexpected obstacles, and thanks to the ranch, knowing how to improvise is a skill he learned well.

Sam earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music Technology from Montana State University and continues to pursue music composition, performance, and audio engineering. He currently works for Praxent in Austin, TX, where his passion for software design is fueled by opportunities to solve real world business headaches for frustrated technology users.

He lives in Kyle, TX with his wife Kristi, young son, and border collie (who does not agree that working on software is just as much fun as working on a ranch).

Sam's web development site
Kristi's academic site

For audio nerds: Our main DAW programs are Apple Logic Pro and Avid Pro Tools. Native Instruments Komplete and the Vienna Symphonic Library provide synthesizers and sampled acoustic instruments. We use synthesizers and effects from Waves, iZotope, Ableton, Slate Digital, Arturia, McDSP, PSP Audioware, Sound Toys, Softube, Cytomic, Airwindows, Stillwell, Voxengo, Plugin Alliance, MeldaProduction, IK Multimedia, Toneboosters, and Universal Audio, along with sound design tools including MetaSynth and Propellerheads Reason. Videos and slideshows are produced with Final Cut Pro and ProShow Producer. Our studio features keyboards from Korg and Yamaha, Universal Audio and MOTU audio interfaces, a microphone cabinet with dynamic, condenser, and ribbon mics, and studio monitors from Dynaudio, ADAM, and Event Electronics.