Recommendations on Music Editors

Suggestions

FruityLoops

Pricing Info: $0 trial, $99 afterwards

• Capable of doing everything you'd want, but it's workflow isn't optimized for MIDI
• Visually customizable
• Trial version can do everything the premium version can, but it can't reopen saved flp projects

Synthfont

Pricing Info: V1 is free, $22 for V2 but with a 30 day free trial

• Fully fledged tool for midi editing.
• It has a streamlined instrument change window, but can still do standard midi editing with a piano roll.
• Focused around MIDI editing, so doesn't have some of the quirks of FruityLoops
• Recommended for newcomers

Reaper

Pricing Info: 60-day free trial, $60 afterwards or have a WinRAR/PJ64-esque prompt upon boot every time

• Allows all functionality of a standard good music editor
• SoundFonts are supported if you download a 3rd party VST

Musescore 4

Pricing Info: Free

• Way better at being notation software that Musescore 3
• Whilst it does support custom SoundFont, it doesn't allow custom names. As such, you'll be stuck with the general MIDI names
• Might have the same issues as Musescore 3 regarding instruments.

Musescore 3

Pricing Info: Free

• Slightly dated notation software, not streamlined for MIDI or notation
• Takes a while to get midi things rolling like the view>synthesizer window being the place select the SoundFont (after adding it in preferences).
• Supports custom SoundFont with custom names, but it doesn't have much CC control other than at the start and for volume continuously
• Has a number of problems regarding instruments with others who have tried MIDI editing with Musescore 3 for DK64. Proceed with caution

BRELs MIDI Editor

Pricing Info: Free

• Allows you to open MIDIs, alter, and save MIDIs out in a number of ways
• Very old (Last version was released in Apr 2011)
• Does not support using a custom SoundFont
• UI and controls can range from intuitive to confusing
• No tempo snapping, just to each MIDI tick

Signal

Pricing Info: Free

• Allows you to open MIDIs, change/add/remove notes, change instruments and save MIDIs out
• Doesn't seem to have the capability to alter non-note/instrument events like pan/reverb
• Doesn't support using a custom SoundFont
• Categorization of instruments isn't based on index in the general MIDI SoundFont, but rather group of where that instrument lies in a music family

Avoid

LMMS

• Doesn't properly export to MIDI. Topics have been open on their forum about this since 2020, so it doesn't seem like they're in a rush to fix this. Mostly just serves as a "change the instrument with the SoundFont to see what sounds good"

OpenMPT

• Basically the same pros and cons as LMMS. The lack of properly saving to MIDI, like LMMS, makes this a hard avoid.