there is sooooo many cool programs to record, edit, slice. and
diced all to heart content. It is called ubuntu studio.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio

I installed it some time ago and un installed just as quickly. I did not
like it at all since it seemed to do things to my system that I did not
have control over. Also, I had most of the programs installed already.
I'd say that it is wiser to install all of them one by one instead of
using Ubuntu Studio. But that's just me.

From there (there were a lot of dead links involved) I found this site
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio/DapperPreparation and am
going through with that installation process as we speak. I will let you
know how that turns out for me.

Yesterday I installed the studio (dapper version onto edgy). Today I found
Rosegarden in synaptic.

It installed a bunch of random programs. but do I need to open them all up
at once or is there one that kinda does more than one thing?

The main one is to make sure that jackd is installed. Most of the programs will
not run unless the jackd sever is running. Most use Rosgarden to tie all of them
in. Hydrogen is freaken cool drum machine. Like if you use the tr-808 sound
module. Whooo hoo. Zynnaddsubfx is a cool modulator synth.