Came back specially to say I agree with both of you and many others - there's a huge difference between playing music and programming music. I prefer another way, when possible: record sheet live (midi, or it, xm, etc) and then edit things a bit. Mainly because I'm an idealist and a programmer. It's very important to me to have music in "vector (vs. raster)" - notes instead of stream format. So, requirement to have hardware instrument is always bugging me.