Programs do tend to excel at some things better than others and they all tend to overlap a bit. There tends to be three main categories to choose from.
Composition software for musicians who can read and write music with or without the aid of an instrument. Motzart would have gone nuts with these kinds of programs.
Then you have your normal DAW programs are your traditional recording studio stuff where a musician plays an instrument and records audio.
Then you have your programs efficient at building music from loops and samples. I kind of see these as building frankenstein compositions from bits an scraps of other artists work. It does save time from playing every note yourself if you can find or build what fits your artistic taste.
Sounds like you want music composition software with midi capability. Sibelius and Finale are the biggies for that. You deal with the actual notes and song writing and the program can transmit and receive to midi devices. You can then move the notes around, change timings add lyrics all that kinds of stuff. These are high end programs packed with features composers use. You find many movie orchestrations written on these kinds of programs and never a note played on an actual instrument, even though the program does allow you to do that too.
Then you have programs that do better as loop/sample based music creation. Acid, Fruity loops, propeller head and any others allow you to take what others built from scratch and piece them together, kind of like stitching a word document together cutting and pasting things. Then you can add a midi keyboard and run virtual instruments, build loops and all that kinds of stuff too. They will even do analog but that's not their main specialty. Building House music, Rave, and Rap can be done on these kinds of programs.
Then you have your traditional DAW programs. Pro Tools, Sonar, Cubase, Logic etc. These programs are mainly multitrack recording programs that let you record from an analog source like a pro analog recording studio would. Most also have midi, virtual instruments and loop based recording features. Their focus is around the analog recording of live musicians but most have good tools for all the other basic stuff.
Like I said, many will have features from all categories but if your focus is mainly on one of the three it would be smart to choose a program that excels in that area. Best thing you can do is Google up a comparison chart and view the features the programs have and narrow down your choices. Then you can look up reviews and do some reading before you purchase. At least this way you aren't stuck with limited features for what you do the most.
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