Audacity

Audacity is a free, Open-Source audio editing software. It can be used to compose music, but it is more geared toward processing audio, so that is more of what we will use it for.
Audacity is good at:

• recording audio quickly with little set-up
• manipulating pre-recorded sound (applying "effects," cutting silence, amplifying quiet recordings, removing noise)
• converting audio between different file-types (high quality WAV to compressed mp3, vice-versa)
• ripping audio from specific kinds of video files (we need an extra library to do this)
• layering multiple audio files (background music, sound effects, voice-over, etc.)

We will primarily use it to record short pieces of audio for further sequencing in FL Studio.

Check it out:

Audacity Homepage

Download:

Download Audacity Here (get Audacity 1.3 Beta)
Info about using Audacity and MP3s

Tutorials:

Audacity Intro for High Schoolers
Short Intro (needs revision)