Nice read, just a piece of commentary my first software app to produce midi tracks was Cakewalk home studio, it came with an old but still useable quik shot midi controller I purchased, from there I used cakewalk and cubase for the longest with my old roland board before the big sequencer workstations hit and I bought the triton le and motif.....but yeah flagship software are the way to go....you have to still be in somewhat of a position for a risk sometimes if they first of a kind or first generation...