Xamu

Thanks everyone! I feel a lot more comfortable around my desktop than my iPad so I think I am going to give Cakewalk a try and see how much I can squeeze out of that for now!

Thanks so much for the help you two! and stoken6, yes I'm so new to this that I really don't know the difference between the types of equipment and what they'd be best for. I do have an iPad and an Android tablet but haven't looked at apps. Basically, all I know is I'd like to record (or obtain) real world sounds and use a software to edit those sounds and help layer them into song tracks - and given I can't read music and have no knowledge of really how music is written or produced, I will be leaning heavily on 'something' to help me establish a rhythm, move samples around within the track and you know, go back and forth, play certain sections of a song and tweak them as I go. Maybe there is a desktop app too that would allow me to do all of the building work from there with inputs mapped to a connected keyboard? (again, not sure if that is even a thing)

Hey you all! I've always been horrible at any type of music but now that I am older and have kids ... I'm even more horrible. Given that they are around 8 years old now and past my skill level I was hoping that I could buy a keyboard and we could learn together. What we'd like to do is take a bunch of sound samples from our environment like clanking dishes, dogs barking, (whatever) and use those sounds to make music with. I don't need orchestra quality sound or anything, just a keyboard that does this easily and allows us to create some tracks and post them online for their friends to listen to. It's easy to go online and read reviews about the best keyboards in our price range ($500-$1000) but I don't know the terminology very well so its hard for me to pinpoint a unit that would be new-user friendly and excel at these particular features. I know there are probably some cheaper keyboards that we could do the same thing with but I'd like something we can grow into that has pretty good quality. It would also be a plus if it were a popular keyboard that has a good bit of tutorials available online. Sorry about the long post, we'd just really like some professional opinions!