I’m a software junkie, and I’ve downloaded, bought, or played with hundreds of obscure bits of music software. Nonetheless, there are a few programs I consider essential: Software I’ve owned for years, can spend hours using comfortably, and can count on to fulfill my needs. Here’s my list of music software I couldn’t do without:

• Native Instruments Reaktor 4: Reaktor is a virtual synthesizer and effects construction kit and much more. I’ve made entire songs out of Reaktor sounds, and I love creating new instruments and effects. (Reaktor 5 is coming this month, can’t wait.)
• FL Studio 5: Formerly known embarrassingly as “Fruityloops”, this is the ultimate virtual drum machine and loop synthesizer. Most of my songs start out in FL Studio, and with the nice synthesizer plug-ins they’re often nearly done before I use anything else. I just wish it was available for Macintosh, since I’m using an iBook as my portable machine. I paid for an ancient version of FruityLoops and have received free upgrades ever since.
• Cubase SX 3: The best sequencer I’ve ever used. I don’t use much MIDI these days, so I use Cubase primarily to mix together loops and audio files that came from Reaktor, FL Studio, and occasionally a real piece of hardware.
• Sound Forge: Sometimes I need an audio editor to process and mixdown final tracks, on those rare occasions when I finish something. I’m not too picky about audio editors—Sound Forge is just the one I paid for a while back. It’s not the latest version, but it works.

I’ll write about each of these in much more detail in future posts, but since I’m just starting this site and so much of music production today depends on the software you use, I thought I should let you know where I’m coming from.

I use these mostly on Windows. Reaktor and Cubase are available for OSX as well, and both allow me to use the product on both my PC and my iBook, which is nice.