Splicing sounds into songs
 

I was looking for a program that I can use to create songs from sound samples. I also want to add my own vocals I have on a little voice recorder I have. I guess what I'm looking for is a really high-quality sound editing tool.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Audacity is an excellent freeware audio editor.

It's not a sequencer, though. For sequencing, I use a commercial app called FL Studio. http://flstudio.com . The cheap versions don't do much--I use the "Producer Edition". There are freeware sequencers available. There's also a type of program called a "tracker", which is a grid-oriented sequencing promgra. They take some learning, but can do what you want. I don't have one to recommend, but google "music tracker", you'll find something. Many years ago I used a tracker called Renoise, and it was okay.

I used to have a program called Hip Hop eJay. It was pretty intuitive, but I think it was fairly limited. I have been trying audacity, and it is good for editing sounds, but I was looking for something more along the lines of Hip Hop eJay, where you can stretch your sounds out and view/edit them individually.

Yep, well, like I say, check out a sequencer like FLstudio or a tracker like Renoise.

I will second the opinion for Audacity.
For freeware its a good program. Ive used it quite a bit.

Here is a good resource for you:

http://www.synthzone.com/digaudio.htm

I used to use Acid Pro but I have switched entirely from Sonic Foundry products when they were bought by Sony. With the exception of Sound Forge ... curse them. :)

I use Sonar for almost everything now.

well I'll put in the vote for Acid Pro, whether it's sonic foundry or sony. If you really hate sony, use Acid 3 - that was still SF and was still better than anything else out there today.

That's when I stopped using it (Acid 3 and Vegas 4) They changed their pricing structure and raked a lot of us over the coals. I'd been using their products since version 1.

I'm quite happy with Sonar 6 PE.

I've played around with FL quite a bit(found something that somehow made it work for free), and it's pretty fun, but had it's limitation and learning curve(if you're new to sequencing).
I was great with the percussions (I'm a drummer, as some of you might know), but always had trouble finding a good, harmonious melody to my songs.
But I've been recommended the Acid software, and I guess it should be a better way to go.
As for sampling sounds, there are tons of freeware on the web, which will allow you to cut a portion out of mp3 or wma tracks and then most sequencers allow you to manipulate the sound itself and incorporate in the song.

If you're interested in a high-quality, free tracker, check out Jeskola Buzz. It's located at www.buzzmachines.com.

Buzz has a pretty darned high learning curve. But once you get it, it's not really that hard. You should definitely check it out! For using samples, you're going to either use the Matilde Tracker or Unwieldy Tracker within Buzz.

Good luck!

Ableton Live is excellent. Version 6 even allows you to sample video and put it in time with your musical creations.

You can use it to sample, create midi sounds, add literally hundreds of effects to your sounds, use wavs/mp3s etc

The nice part about it is you record live, like jam sessions, or bursts of creativity and then you can integrate it into pretty much anything, hook the program up to your decks and drop pretty much any sound into your mixes in time, mash up beats that are playing etc etc etc

very powerful program: http://www.ableton.com/