Help finding new MIDI Composition software

I have a request, in case anybody can help.

I really miss my old music software... I used to use Sony ACID.  It was a multi-track music editor for audio, MIDI, and video.  It was all event/loop-based, meaning you create music by creating sound/video/midi clips (collectively called "loops") and then placing instances ("events") of these loops into your project, arranging them into a song.  It had some stability issues, but I enjoyed composing with it.

Unfortunately, it's commercial software, and I lost my license to it after an upgrade from XP to Windows 7.  And now I have tunes bouncing around in my head begging to be written.  I've tried a lot of free software, but everything I've tried seems to have been designed with other purposes than mine in mind.

Here's what I don't want:
Music notation software like Sibelius.
Software specifically for artists recording through MIDI instruments, like Anvil Studio.
LMMS.  It's great software, but too experimental for the concrete musical ideas I want to produce.
Strictly-waveform-based software like Audacity.

Here's features it must have:

• Available for Windows.
• Multi-track support.
• VSTi synth support.
• Event-based MIDI composition.
• Ability to export to .mid format, and render as mp3/wav/ogg.
• Notes visually represented by bars.

There's PLENTY of commercial apps with all these features, but I need a free solution.
If anybody uses free software that has those features, please share a link here.


(pssst... attatched is a 16-sec sample of my work.  It's part of a longer song I never finished.)

Sony, you tease me oh so cruelly. As I was browsing Hitsquad for software, I came across this:

Sony ACID XPress, a 10-track freeware version of ACID.  It  has many features. of which purportedly not one is a Save button (read the user comments).

I won't even bother.

TRIPLE POST OMFG

I came across a neat little program called Temper.  And I am happy.  Can you guess why I'm happy?

Because despite its awkward GUI arrangement, it does what I need!

well, i was going to suggest Mixcraft
it has a free demo and you can save!!
the only problem is that you cant export the song...
But..... you can record your computers output with audacity so it can be exported 
anyway, its very good!

there's a severe lack of free mixing software. which is understandable. if you're seriously getting into it, then its definitely worth investing some cash in a quality program. Acid isn't the greatest.
i hadnt heard of Temper before, looks interesting.

Quick question, what's wrong with LMMS? It's beta in the same way that Google Mail was beta until recently. I've never had an issue with it.

I checked out Temper; frankly I feel that the interface is very poor compared to LMMS, but if you prefer it and it works for you then that's good

Also, I liked that sample you attatched.

I still would recommend EnergyXT, the program that Nifflas also used for making the Knytt Stories song.

True, it does cost a little bit of money, but its perfect.

but its perfect.

really? i havent heard much of it. looking at the site, it looks good. what makes it so much different than other programs (i'm using Ableton Lite)?

Yes, Ableton Live and EnergyXT are much more like what I'm used to, but like ACID, they're not free.  They're professional software.

I don't know the aspects in which each one gains ground on the others and/or falls flat, but here's what I do know:

They all have lame demo versions.  Just judging from the feature lists, EnergyXT's demo is the worst, followed by ACID XPress.  While Ableton Live Lite is the only one that can save, it's limited to four MIDI tracks - a lot less than I'm used to.  Truthfully, my music doesn't usually have more than 4 instruments playing concurrently, but I do often introduce and remove instruments throughout the piece, so I would have to use Program Changes often if I were limited to 4 tracks.
Unfortunately, that'll make it a choice between using my favorite VSTi (limited to 4 instruments) or having more than 4 instruments (using the crappy standard GS WaveTable synth).  You see, my favorite VSTi synth ignores Program Change events, so I need separate tracks for each instrument I use.

Still, I'll consider Ableton Lite.  I'm actually finding Temper difficult to use.  It's annoying with the snaps. Like with many programs, you can override grid snap with the Alt key... but once you do, the snap becomes relative to its current position, and the only way to get the note back onto the grid is to quantize it.  Also, sometimes playback completely stops being voiced and I can't get any sound until I reboot the laptop.


About LMMS...  I don't know what to say.  It just doesn't fit my niche.  While it made some cool stuff, it felt like I wasn't truly in control; everything seemed to revolve around sound files and sound plugins.  A lot could be done with these elements, but in the end I felt like it all boiled down to me giving the computer direction on when I want stuff to play, and then having the computer make music.  The reason I felt that way is probably because LMMS isn't consistent with the way I like to write music.  I enjoy working with MIDI specifically because, by the nature of its structure and use, it is consistent with how I write music.  LMMS has MIDI, but it starts to get unwieldy when you try to write a whole multi-track song with it. Clearly, it's not intended to be used that way.
Everybody says that "LMMS can do anything," but I don't know.  From what I've seen, LMMS can't do everything for everyone.  But it certainly is complete in its purpose, and it seems that it can easily create any sort of music assuming that it fits your style of writing music.
In any case... FLAME SHIELD, ACTIVATE!


EDIT:  Uh, I can't find any downloads anywhere for Ableton Live Lite.  As far as I can tell from Google searches, Ableton used to offer it on their site (not anymore; now they just have a 30-day limited trial of Live), and it also used to come preinstalled on some computers.

Live Lite is a paid version of Ableton (much cheaper, but not free). I got mine free because it came with a midi keyboard i bought for $100. It comes bundled with many different M-Audio products. Like I said before, it's always worth dishing out a few bucks for a program. Free audio programs in general just don't compare.
I'm thinking about purchasing EnergyXT, if it has ReWire support. It looks like a good deal.

We finally dug out that old ACID registration email from our old HD to see what our key was, and it worked.  It wasn't a "single-use" license.

So I'm going back to ACID.  It may not be the best music composition software out there, but all music software has a learning curve, and I've been stuck on curves for too long.  I just need to get back to creating now, already!

Besides, this has the added benefit that my .acd-zip files can be opened again! This means I can edit my older music (read: all of my music, as I've written nothing since we got Win7).

EDIT: Unfortunately, it does not display correctly in Win7.  When in Inline Midi Editing, the shading and row separation on the note grid (which lets you easily line up notes) is not visible unless you're in a Classic windows theme.
EDIT EDIT: Never mind, the visibility of those lines depends on the color setting for 3D Objects, which I must have accidentally changed to white some time ago.