I've dabbled in Fruity Loops about a year or so ago but never got fully into it. I'm looking to start at it again, I've recently been getting a lot of ideas. What would you recommend? Reason? Fruity Loops? I'm pretty much looking for something with a lot of generators to play with my midi keyboard.

The only one I have any experience with is the ACID line from Sony Media (http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/acidfamily.asp). I'm not sure if this is what you mean.

I've got the real cheap loop program, but even it works pretty well, allowing you to stack many layers of loops. And their loop library (http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/loop_libraries/content.asp) is huge.

I have no idea of the midi capbilities of the program, but I'm sure that info would be pretty easy to find out...

any decent midi software will work ok, the trick is that you usually need to go and by the midi samples in much the same way as you would buy photoshop plugins. Adobe Audition is quite handy, sound forge, acid pro and cool edit are all pretty good, but the standouts would be qbass and pro tools (qbass is midi specific and pro tools is the final word in digital mixing but it does have midi support) it depends on the sort of sound you are after but if you can track down samples based on the 808 drum machine this is a great start. after all the beastie boys spoke the truth when they proclaimed "nothin sounds quite like an 808" in terms of electric drums, roland vdrums is a good place to start but you play them like a drumkit rather than programming them like a drum machine.

Slightly OT, but if you're looking for a deal on a USB recording interface check this (http://www.musiciansfriend.com/stupid) out - today only. It's an M-Audio refurbished adapter for $60. One's coming my way, but it doesn't do MIDI. The link won't work after 1/3 because it's their special deal of the day.

As far as drums, I've heard that this one (http://www.leafdigital.com/software/leafdrums/) is good and you can download a trial version.

I've been using Reason 3.0 from PropellerHeads Software. Just bought the upgrade 12/31/06. The UI is the most fantastic and realistic I've seen yet. It's a view of a "rack" that synth musicians are familiar with. The Redrum module rocks for making drum loops ... looks exactly like any drum module hardware ... and you can copy the midi output to the editor that is a no brainer to use.

you can download a demo at...
http://www.propellerheads.se/

Unfortunately you can't save with the demo version and the full version is priced sorta high at $300+.

I have used Sony's Acid, Abletron's Live, Adobe Audition, and some freeware programs.

I haven't tried fruityloops yet.

Slightly OT, but if you're looking for a deal on a USB recording interface check this (http://www.musiciansfriend.com/stupid) out - today only. It's an M-Audio refurbished adapter for $60. One's coming my way, but it doesn't do MIDI. The link won't work after 1/3 because it's their special deal of the day.

As far as drums, I've heard that this one (http://www.leafdigital.com/software/leafdrums/) is good and you can download a trial version.

OT also...I've got a Tascam US-122 interface that has a single midi plug in. I don't use midi but the interface itself was a good deal. I think I got it off guitar center's auction-like site for $120. I used to use garage band but a few months ago I purchased Cubase's SL3 hybrid version because I thought my brother-in-law and I were going to do some real recording, but he flaked on me big time. Now I'm stuck with a program that frankly comes with far more functions than what I really need for myself.

For laying down beats? Fruity Loops is, as I understand it, the industry standard.

For sound editing? I would probably go with Adobe Audition.