Sound
I have been looking for good tools to create and edit soundtracks for my projects. Thanks to a friend, I have a MIDI keyboard and a Roland D110 synth module. It has that great synth sound! I haven’t found a good MIDI editor/sequencer yet, but there are a few multi-track recording programs that are worth noting.
Sound Creation
A friend pointed me to a great tool called SynthEdit that allows you to create your own synthesized sounds. It takes MIDI input. I highly recommend but be warned, you will spend too much time with this! :-) A good online resource by the author of several great YouTube tutorials on SynthEdit is here: http://www.xoxos.net/ Later we found a similar tool, but with a much better interface and features: SynthMaker.
Here is a good book, “How To Make A Noise – A comprehensive guide to synthesizer programming” located here: http://www.noisesculpture.com/index.html
Sound Recording / Editing Tools
For Mac user: go with GarageBand
For Linux: Rosegarden
For PC:
Cubase Studio 4
Ableton Live LE
Cakewalk Music Creator
MAGIX Music Maker
KVRaudio.com keeps a data base and reviews of all the apps.
MIDI Software Synthesizers / Sequencing / Editing Tools
The KORE player from Native Instruments is a free MIDI software based synthesizer. It comes with several synthesized and sampled instruments. You can purchase additional sounds through their website. These sounds are simply amazing.