I only really got interested in music about a year ago, and I think this is my first post /music/, so I apologize if I come off as a bit DQN. My question is if anyone knows of a good program for scoring music. Being free would definatly be a big plus. Also, some kind of itegrated synth would be useful for quickly testing changes (on that point maybe I should acctually be looking for synth software instead of or in addition to the aforementioned.)

Hmm... I have no real experience with this, but would something like Nuendo work, maybe?

I think you might've asked a question that 4-ch doesn't really know the answer to, so report back if you find something...

WEll, scoring like in Writing?
Classical music-type enthusiasts use either Finale or Sibelius (I use the latter). You can try them both and check which suits your tastes.
If you're more of a rocker, get Guitar pro.

I used to use Finale, it has a pretty good integrated synth. I moved to tracker software, like OpenMPT, then Piston Collage, then Renoise briefly, then Ableton Live. Now I use Piston Collage and Ableton almost exclusively.

You might check out the iichan music board if you want to get into synth type of software. Tracking's a great place to start for that stuff. http://iiichan.net/boards/music/wakaba.html

I use Sibelius, personally. I asked for it for christmas one year.

I'm sure there are some free/open source software out there to do the job though.