I'm currently looking for a good music sequencer for Windows that is free, simplistic, supports exporting to MP3, Ogg Vorbis, or MIDI formats (doesn't need good import capabilities, I can use audacity to clean things up and change output formats), and is somewhat mainstream. Does anyone here have any suggestions? Here are some more specific details I would like to share that may help give better details on what I'm looking for:

- A staved musical notation mode, or a really simple "place the colored dots" mode (where a dot corresponds to a pattern) for the general sequencing UI

- I don't need something that supports super-cool modern sounds, in fact I'm trying to find something I can make chiptunes with

-As said above, exporting to MIDI, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis preferred

Note: I looked at anvil studio as someone had once told me to do, and it *does* have a free version -- however, it only allows some exporting and only supports up to one-minute-long tracks. Therefore, it's not an option.

TIA

Try this http://stabyourself.net/rimshot/

This looks cool, however it seems to only have support for drumlines (unless I'm mistaken?)

However, this actually is a perfect example of what type of UI I'm looking for (however, again, I'm equally satisfied with a staved notation UI)

Well It's open source so you could mod it for your own purposes.

Theoretically I could; However, that's not a very easy thing to do with something like music sequencing software which I know little to nothing about. It would take a lot more time to make it that way than to just cough up $20 for something like Finale, or wait for a better free alternative here in this thread. It's like saying "Linux is open sourced, so if you don't like how it doesn't look like windows, mod it so that it's more windows-like".

You can try LMMS (Linux Multimedia Studio) I guess, it's has some of the more complex capabilities but you don't have to use them if you don't want to. It also comes with a GB sound chip plugin if you want to make some old school chiptunes.

Hmm, I've already tried it out, and immediately noticed that point you brought up (it's rather complex, not my liking)

You could just pay for it.

Or I could just see if there's a good free alternative.

Sometimes quality software costs money. It's a reality of life, especially with something specialized that you're looking for.

If you're looking to make chiptunes, wouldn't a tracker seem more appropriate? Renoise is good (though commercial software - there's a trial) but for a free/open source solution OpenMPT looks good.

OpenMPT indeed looks good pretty much exactly what I was aiming for. Thanks, benryves!

EDIT: reporting back after having figured it out, this is amazing. Exactly what I wanted, even if I didn't know it. Benryves++ benryves++ benryves++ benryves++.