So, for the longest time I've wanted to make music, but I've never been able to wrap my head around learning an instrument or learning to read music sheets.

I'm sure most people's first thought when it comes to "games" that let you create music is Mario Paint, but I've always been unsatisfied with that due to its rather basic limitations, such as the inability to draw out notes.

Recently I discovered an interesting Playstation 2 program called Magix Music Maker, which is apparently common and super cheap. Now at first this seemed like it only allowed you to string samples together, but then I discovered it had a sample *editor*--which allows you to create them from scratch. It's interface is simple (there's keyboard keys lined up in a column along the left and you draw lines next to them to indicate what note you want to play and for how long) and I was actually able to create some bits that sounded convincingly like something I could see being in an SNES game.

But it has shortcomings. First, there are glitches that cause the sample editor and the beatbox to become totally silent. I'm not sure what causes this (it may be due to my having a late-era slim PS2). Second is that the samples can only have two concurrent instruments (up to eight would be ideal) and third is that they can only be like thirty seconds long.

Honestly, I wish there was a program that was like Magix's sample editor, just with that as the whole program, and more fully-featured in the ways I suggested.

.... Well, also I would like for it to be for either DOS or Windows 98.

Anyone know of music making programs for those?

(Should this be in PC Gaming or Other? I mean, I talked about two console releases but..... well, I'll leave that up to the mods).