My department, as most music departments, have been teaching software in a computer lab with a bunch of commercial (expensive) software: Notation: Finale, Sibelius Sound editing, mixing: Logic, Digital Performer, Pro Tools Sound programming: Max Writing: MS Word Spreadsheet: MS Excel Analysis: Matlab, SPSS The free software community has developed rapidly in the last years, and I now see that there are good, free and cross-platform software covering a lot of the functionality of the above-mentioned programs: