steinberg's, or cakewake's stuff. Cakewalk have easy to use programs like MC3.... Steinberg have synth addons to mess around with... or cakewalk's loop series

My Suggestions

Well, to start off I would suggest the CM Sequencer that comes with the Computer Music magazine. It is pretty basic and easy to use.

If you don't want to spend much money and have a good soundcard and fast computer (RAM >> 512, Processor >> 1.8) in order of $$ go with
In order of ease of use and price:
1. Fruity Loops ~ $100
2. Cakewalk HomeStudio < $200
3. Steinberg Cubase LE ~ $300 I think

If you just want software to program buy an interface from M-Audio (like the MobilePre) and you will get Reason Adapted for free and Live Lite. A great way to start.

Good luck.

Tracktion is simple, and from what I've used of it, it works well. It's not as deep as some of the others, but you can get good sound out of it.

Read up on it here:
http://www.mackie.com/products/tracktion2/index.html

It seems like a great place to start, but that's just me. I started digital with Cakewalk Pro 8 or 9... and jumping into that without prior experience can be a BIG learning experience. In hindsight, Tracktion seemed like it would have been nice to start on.

Just take some ACID from Sony and you will be hallucinating everything you want.

Chief ACID head engineer or something like that? Look at all the colors of the words in my letters as it flies through the elephant mice.
Ms. Remy Acid David

Check out a sequencer called "Reaper"... it is free for a little while

I really like ableton live for simplicity and it comes with a pile of tutorials. It isn't very expensive either. Good luck.

I use Cubase SX3 which is on sale for a big discount right now as a new model (Cubase 4) is coming out in Dec/Jan. SX3 might be a little more than you want to spend to learn the ropes at 450-500 dollars US (originally 799 but cheaper as new version coming out)

However to start with, you could consider Cubase SE3 (149 dollars) or SL3 (299 but you may find it on sale for cheaper if you shop around due to the new version coming out soon). SE3 gives you decent MIDI and audio options, 48 audio tracks, 64 midi tracks etc, delay comp., vst support, a couple of vstis and some effects plugins included etc. You may have to spend 30 bucks on the Steinberg key to use with it too, just to warn you about that.

Cubase LE is not sold commercially btw, only bundled with audio cards and mixers etc. It is similar in spec to the old SE1.06, being based on the older Cubase SX1 audio engine.

Tracktion2 is also a decent program for 200 dollars (you may get it for less, like 159 if you shop around) .

You could also consider Cakewalk's software, Sonar Home Studio XL (based on sonar 4) etc for 140 US dollars which is similar in function to cubase se3

Acid/Ableton Live/FL - these are all great for loop based music, one could argue they are a little lacking in some MIDI areas and recording audio.

Demos are available for most of these products, try them out and see which suits you best, there is no one definitive choice...