What would folk recommend for music making software?
I’m after something that’s more advanced than simple Fruityloops-like pre-made loop generators, but not to the extent of being the confusing expert-levelness of things like Reason.
PC or Mac?
Here is a nice list of music sequencers:
FL Studio (formly known as fruityloops) is pretty good. This is a full-fledge music sequencer,
if you haven’t seen it in a while. FL Studio - Wikipedia
You also might be interested in trackers:
I had a music professor who composed a movie score for me that was brilliant. He used http://www.finalemusic.com/default.aspx. When I asked about it, he said the software is very straight forward and anyone with a decent knowledge of composing could pick it up and make beautiful noise with it.
Hmm, I would say Reason is actually pretty easy to use, but like any instrument it takes some practice to learn of course. I use Sonar on Windows and Logic on Mac, both of which I can reccommend, but again take some practice to learn.
Cubase, and Logic are the only true DAW’s out there. (and used by professionals all over the world, for a reason)
Both can be used straight forward (simple sequencing), or feature rich (complex sequencing/mixing)
with audio tracks aswel as midi data (with or without plugin use).
Both support all the known standards in the pro world. And are supported buy third parties.
FL is nice for a beginner leveled user in DAW usage, but once you are advancing it starts to break under your demands.
Finale is a notation program from the ground up, and is for that purpose the top of the chain.
Notation programs work the other way around, compared to DAW’s (sequencers alike).
With finale you make the score, and than play it. In a DAW you play it, and than can make a score from it (if you want).
Cheers guys, I’ll check 'em out.
steego : Yeah, I’m sure Reason’s easy if you know what’s what, but last time I looked at it… you wired up all the mixers and amps and stuff yourself and I’ll be damned if I knew what any of it did 
Don’t really have time to sit and learn a new program, just wanting something that’s intuitive enough to jump into but can do stuff a little fancier than the Fruityloops boop-beep-beep-boop-ad-nauseum kinda thing… although it might have come along since I last used it.
You don’t really have to do the wiring yourself if you’re just starting out, just right click the mixer and select a device to add and it’s already routed up for you. Add a NN-19 or NN-XT, load up and instrument and start playing.
Unless you’re recording from microphones etc, you will need plugins for instruments in the other programs mentioned here as well, and the concepts are not very different from Reason, except that you don’t connect “physical” wires.
FL Studio does more than electronic synth. 
But you really didn’t say what kind of music you’re interested in.
And FL Studio is not a plugin or generator. FL Studio is a DAW. A DAW is your workstation that
brings all these elements together. It mixes, records, seqeuences, etc… A DAW doesn’t cater to
any particular sound or taste of music.
So, if you’re looking for a particular sound, then you may be looking for a particular instrument.
Well, back when I was doing MIDI music, I was using a tool called Cakewalk. Although this was, like, 15 years ago when I was using that, so I don’t have a very clear memory about how intermediate this is, even if it’s still being made for that matter. It was awesome, tho.
I use good old GarageBand, you can find heaps of instruments for it, and I recently learnt about using soundfonts with GarageBand (I’ll leave that to you and Google).
I´m not musician, but if you don´t want to waste your money, go for LMMS is free and there are many instruments…
Budget DAWs: GarageBand, included with any Mac. Or Reaper for both OS X and Windows (now available as a 64-bit version).
GB would definitely be the simplest. If you want to spend a little more, Ableton Live has an intro version, but it’s somewhat limited. But you can usually also get a very limited version for free with keyboards and other hardware. You need a musical keyboard if you want to do anything useful.
Has to be FL studio for pc or Logic for the mac but those are end game music softwares and will get real deep, as deep as you can go. I’ve heard of musicians never coming back.
You should try Renoise if you can wrap your head around the concept of trackers, since it’s much cheaper than most other DAWs, supports VSTi plugins and instruments (many of which are free or at least cheap-ish) and features many great effects out of the box.
I’m looking for software that I can use to record music using just the plain computer keyboard (I don’t have a MIDI keyboard), and then playback and edit the result, using programmable sound for the “instrument” so I can design my own (as with CSound, which I’ve used in the past). It’s surprisingly difficult to find something like this…
Is there a Unity3D program like this, or something similar which is freely modifiable so I could add the features I need?
I’m a big fan of Ableton Live, as a working musician,. Its very quick to learn (do the tutorials), and its very focused on composition (and live stuff, but this isnt what your after). Just load her up with a bunch of VSTs, or use the built in instruments (they are mostly very good) and your golden.
Shayne - thank you for your reply. Ableton Live’s website doesn’t seem to say whether it allows music entry using the normal computer keyboard (I don’t have a MIDI keyboard).
Also, what’s the sound quality like? “Finale” has a method for simulating human playback which sounds virtually indistinguishable from actual musicians - see the video and sound clips at: http://www.finalemusic.com/Finale/Default.aspx
Of course, Finale costs a tremendous amount of money…