I guess you have a midi keyboard as well for that. I recently sold mine since I hadn't used it in a while (and it wasn't a very good one).
From my experience I liked Reason better than Fruity Loops.
Oh, and I decided to do everything in Audacity regarding the OP. The new beta version is pretty awesome. I remember when it used to be such a limited software, and now you can do so much on it!
No. I can't play keyboard for shit. I just enter the notes. I have a limited understanding of reading music so it's enough for me to be able to write notes in and what not by hand, or mouse I suppose.
I actually have a Casio in my room but it was my cousins and I RARELY fool around with it.
And yeah Audacity is GREAT. The thing I love is that you can control the scroll bar with the arrow keys which helps out alot when your trying to be accurate about which parts you wanna single out for whatever reason (especially trimming). I make my ringtones with it and i've used it in the past for other things and I find time and time again that it's better than most free programs out there.
Hmm...Perhaps i'll check out a demo for reason. I'm still not sure what i'll end up buying anyways. So far Fruity Loops looks like it has alot of stuff and doesn't look hard to understand plus a few friends have it but I haven't decided yet.