Hi Baz
MIDI interfaces for the 500 work on the 1200. Personally I wouldn't recommend a sampler for the Amiga as the results from recording your own samples in 8 bit (all an unexpanded Amiga is capable of) can be crunchy at best. Sequencer One is a good MIDI sequencer for a beginner but you would need a MIDI keyboard and sound source (not just a MIDI controller) to take advantage of it. If you want to mix Amiga samples and MIDI then OctaMED is the next logical step and is used and abused by many people on this forum. for purely MIDI stuff then the two most popular (with good reason) are Bars & Pipes and Music X. Bars & Pipes seems more popular mainly because it is still developed by Alfred Faust and you can get it for free - yes, for free - from his website.