Speak english, Modron 
I’m still a music newbie, so i have no idea what you mean by ‘volume envelops’ and ‘textured sounds’ :-?
Thanks for the comment 
I have used Melody Assitant for a while now, and it is a very good peice of software. You have to pay $15 to register it before you can use all of the features, though … but Melody Assistant is worth a lot more than $15! It’s great! Real instrument files. I think you can order a CD with higher quality sound samples if you wanted. Runs on Windows and Mac.
http://www.myriad-online.com/melody.htm
Or there is Harmony Assistant for $65. It has more features, but, personally, I haven’t noticed too much of a difforence between the two … Although there was this neat ocarina tabliture mode for Harmony Assistant…
REASON!
It’s the easyest and best music-creation software there is!
But it has no good audio support, but two good softsynts, two samplers, one loopplayer, one mixer, some really good effects and everything is placed in a virtual rack.
I have yet too se a more intuituve piece of music software.
Oh and close your eyes when you see the price, they got a 20 minute, nonsaving demo.
a) you could buy (it’s extremely affordable) cubasis5 (pinnacle/steinberg) - it contains probably everything (inc. wavelab lite and pinnacle studio8) to get you started and actually produce usable output (also commercially usable in multimedia field). Add EnergyXT and this combo is hard to beat for it’s price. Option to direct syncing music (audio) to video (as avi).
b) there are also options to get very cheap academic cubase vst5.1 stock, do the math for upgrade path to SX1/2 costs if you are on budget.
c) you have also crossgrade path to samplitude7.x, which is absolute winner, also direct sync audio to video.
d) for free, you could play with computer muzys.
I am personally negatively biased towards reason.
Here are a couple of programs I have been using lately that I find to be very good.
>>Aodix: A tracker that is basically a sampler/sequencer, that will take any raw sample you give it, and treat it much in the same way as a midi instrument. You can use a number of wavs, played over a 2 or more octave scale, or if you prefer midi events, at the same time, and though I have not entirely figured it out, I have turned out some pretty good stuff with it. Great program, and free. Link>> http://www.smartelectronix.com/~arguru/
>>Sawcutter: This program takes raw samples, or built in wave data, and lets you process the sample with a wide range of envelops, delays, and filters, including cutoff frequency and resonance, and as well as allowing you to then save your creation as a wav file, you can play it on the built in sequencer. Also a great program, and free. Link>>
http://www.cuttermusic.com/
>>For making raw sound data, to be processed in this way, I use mostly soundforum synth ( free ), FM dreams ( a free FM synth ), fruityloops drumsynth ( free ), and any other soft synth, or raw sample data I can find on the web. I also use quartz audio master and audacity, also both free, as i have mentioned to master my loops and whatnot.
Here’s a fractal music generator that does quite a nice job with a bit of tweaking. It’s not even half bad without tweaking. It generates music, and even midi scores algorythmically according to various specifications or even scripts, and is not only enjoyable to listen to, but I may even use this thing in making some sound tracks. And it’s easy to use. It didn’t make a sound when I first started it, but I changed it to ‘microsoft wavtable synth’ in its options and it worked fine. I am a professional musician, and I will use this, but the real beauty of it is, if you couldn’t sing jimmy crack corn to save your life, you can still make some pretty good music with this.
http://reglos.de/musinum/
though i haven’t had much of a chance to experiment with it yet, I made this little midi file,…it also had some nice examples that came with it, but here’s what i came up with anyway, so far…
http://home.att.net/~moton-toybox/CHUNK3.MID
BWARG. Just wanting to keep this thread at the top, and to prevent it from disappearing into forum oblivion. This thread should be made sticky, as music is very important in professional CG animations, and making music is fun
Okay, I really cannot believe I made this out of boredom in less than 20 minutes, but here it is:
http://omarmodesto.tripod.com/omarmod.zip
Comments? Oh, and someone PLEASE make this thread sticky, for people who need music making programs (and for anyone who wishes to post links to his/her music).
Note: I recommend downloading the Tracker’s Handbook and putting it somewhere near your tracking app:
http://egnatia.ee.auth.gr/~nalevrid/enf/trackers/TheTrackersHandbook.html
Get the HTML version.