I have read through the first few chapters of Spivak, however my personal preference is for Apostol's Calculus. It's also a very rigorous approach, and a very well respected book, however it starts more gently than Spivak's. With Spivak's book, the problems start out extremely hard, and get easier as the book goes on (mostly by getting used to his style, not objectively). With Apostol I was able to understand and answer all the questions in the first few chapters much more easily, and then I saw the difficulty increase a bit; however it increases progressively throughout the book. Many of the problems in the introduction of Apostol are exactly the same as those in Spivak, however the order and context that they are presented in leads you to the correct method for proving them, whereas Spivak's are more isolated.
There are many great discussions about calculus books on other forums, such as The Should I Become a Mathematician? Thread on Physics Forums.
I agree wholeheartedly with mathwonk's statement that, although the books are difficult, reading different approaches and going over them multiple times is really what gives you a deeper understanding of calculus. Mathwonk also mentions that most students find Apostol very dry and scholarly, where Spivak is more fun; however, I have not found this to be the case. I have worked through every problem in Apostol's Calculus through chapter 10 so far, and it has been a joy (most times). As an added bonus, Apostol's Calculus covers linear algebra as well, and the second volume covers multivariable calculus. Spivak's analogous book, "Calculus on Manifolds", is known as an extremely difficult text, and is commonly used as an introduction to differential geometry (indeed, his comprehensive volumes on differential geometry mention Calculus on Manifolds as a prerequisite).
The choice of book should also reflect your future interests. I am a computer programmer currently, and am looking to go into mathematics exclusively. It sounds like you are still melding the two. I would say that Apostol's book might serve you a little better in this respect as well, as it is slightly tilted towards analysis, whereas Spivak's is tilted towards differential geometry. For instance, Apostol introduces "little-o" notation, a cousin of "big-O" notation which is used extensively in computer science. That being said, Spivak has been described by some as a deep real-analysis text more than a calculus book, so you would still deeply cover all the fundamentals.
Another set of calculus books which I own and are held in high regard are Courant's. My brief skim of them, as well as other's comments, suggest that they are more focused on applications perhaps than some of the other books. Apostol's is still, in my opinion, very well peppered throughout with applications; many chapters contain a specific "applications of ..." section which links the theoretical concepts you just learned with the applied use of those concepts.
My only exposure to Courant's expository style comes from his excellent book What is Mathematics. This is a book I would strongly recommend reading regardless of what calculus book you choose. I cannot praise Courant's lucid writing highly enough, and look forward to working though his Calculus texts in the future.
I think that you would find Apostol's book sufficiently rigorous, as well as extremely intuitive. I also am a musician, and coupled with my computer programming experience it seems that perhaps we think alike. Whatever book you choose, recognize before you start it that you are running a marathon, not a sprint.
I find that the impressiveness of a Khan Academy video for me is negatively related to how much I know of the subject. As a math graduate student and calculus teacher, I find Khan's math/calculus videos the least impressive of the lot, his physics/chemistry/biology videos mildly impressive, and his history videos the most impressive.
What this suggests to me is that the Khan Academy is lacking in depth and clarity of presentation, as well as in addressing the subtleties and key issues that would be necessary to impress a person with some knowledge of the subject. Watching the Khan Academy is roughly akin to having a smart kid in your class (who is learning the subject along with you) explain to you what he/she has understood of the subject. It is not really comparable to how an expert teacher would convey the material.
This may not be completely a minus, because the lack of polish and the chumminess of the videos might itself be an endearing factor that makes people more comfortable with the videos. It also makes it easier to scale up and make a larger quantity of videos. Also, the low intensity of the videos makes it easy for a person to watch them when tired and distracted without missing out on too much.
Here are some examples of sloppiness:
(i) In the calculus videos, when I viewed them, the graphs were drawn very shakily, extremely hard to understand, and not well labeled.
(ii) In a video on classical mechanics, there were some inaccurate statements about normal force, describing it as a reaction to gravitational force in the action-reaction sense (this was fixed later, I think). These weren't merely careless errors in speaking, but reflected a deeper lack of understanding.
(iii) The examples and symbol choices are often confusing.
If you are recommending watching Khan Academy videos, I suggest you add the caveat that they should not expect a lot more (in terms of accuracy and quality of explanation) than they would expect learning from their colleagues.
Best Answer
I consider both of Strang's books must-reads for undergraduates. These are what applied mathematics books should look like. There's a perception that applied books are merely rote procedural texts, where proofs are omitted and they basically give toolbox approaches to the material. Bad applied books do this—good ones like Strang's don't omit proofs, but they merely downplay them. They are both rich with relevant applications—that is, applications that are currently being used in research and practice by applied mathematicians and other professionals—beautifully written and conceptually careful. The Calculus book has the added bonus of being available online for free at Strang's website. Don't be fooled into spending all your money on the second edition of the calculus book—it's no different from the first, it merely contains Strang's "Highlights of Calculus" in addition, which is good but doesn't really add anything to the book's quality.
A word of warning: There are several versions of Strang's linear algebra texts. The one you really want to read is Linear Algebra And Its Applications. The other book-Introduction To Linear Algebra-is a dramatically watered down version of this book and it's missing many of Strang's wonderful sidebars and digressions. So the "non-introduction" version is the one you want.