Music writing, editing, and synthesizing software recommendation?
I'd love to find a free or reasonably inexpensive music editing program designed for writing music. Ideally, it would
* Have digital multi-track mixing, with control over fades and pitch over time for each track or sound
* Allow sampling or import of other sounds/recordings
* Have pre-defined instrument sounds you can drag&drop to the timeline.
* Must run on a PC
I'm not a musician, but am familiar with using some digital video editing packages like Adobe Premiere or After Effects. I am looking for a program that will give me similar control, but designed more for audio than video. I'm not afraid of using a very technical program with a steep learning curve, but don't want to cough up big money for something professional.
Any suggestions?