[musictlk] Music software

[Kenneth Downey]

I have noticed over the years that there is very little music software for the blind. Yes, we have sequencers like QWS and Sonar, and the Dancing Dots software for braille music, but there are some things I would really like to be able to do, and I'm wondering if any of you have ideas on this.
1. Synthesis. On one hand, VST hosts, at least the ones I know about, do everything graphically, so even though you   can load a soft synth like Hypersonic into memory, you're not likely to be able to do much with it except play the preassigned patches and soundscapes, unless you want to just experimentally click around with the mouse. A really good examlle, using Hypersonic 2, is modulation speed. While you can adjust a lot of variables with knobs, switches and buttons on a MIDI keyboard, you can't adjust the speed of vibrato, because it's generally not something assigned to a MIDI CC number. Audacity has a wonderful nongraphical interface for VST plugins, but to my knowledge it can not be used to play MIDI live.
2. Other programs, like Synth Edit, just aren't accessible, at least to my knowledge. While it's true that, through programs like CHUCK, sounds can be created through a C style -mand line language, and CSound which is similar, what I am really after is something like my old JD800. Yes, I could probably learn a whole new programming language and work  for hours to make sounds I used to be able to make in just a few minutes with my keyboard, but not everyone can learn programming, and personally I can think of much better uses of my time than to spend hours making a sound I may only use once or twice. It's high time that the blind community as a whole gets to experience what I did with my old JD 800.   
Next comes audio analysis. We can do a lot of this by ear, but our ers can't give us as much detail as we might like.  There are two types of analysis I know of. One type is amplitude analysis, and that's what sighted people see on the screen when examining wave forms. This type, while fascinating, would be more educational than necessary. It would be just as easy to listen for clicks and pops than to sonify a waveform and listen for abrupt changes in it. Nevertheless, I am working on such a sonifier if any of you are interested in hearing what these wave forms sound like. Frequency analysis, on the other hand, is very important, as it allows you to do everything from synthesizing complex sounds to finding frequencies that need to be filtered from a sound. 
So my question is, what accessible software do you know about? I'm running Windows Xp currently, but may get a Mac in future. I also have an iPhone, and have to say that the music apps on iOS that are accessible are astounding.
Thanks in advance for all the feedback!
'

Good is the worst enemy of best.
Ken