I am not looking for anything too fancy. I just want to be able to grab a tune that I make up in my mind and put it down somewhere and improve it. I am willing to learn by messing around with the program and/or with internet guides. I would prefer the application to be free, even if it comes at a bit of usability/quality. Again I just want to be able to store a tune and work on it periodically, nothing serious.

ableton live is the golden industry standard for almost everything digital audio related
fl studio is usable for its inexpense and a lot of the supported VSTs are perfectly workable if you just want to make repetitive dance music
renoise, or basically any tracker is good to learn on because they offer very few shortcuts / bad habits compared to a regular contemporary DAW & they're the best tool for sequencing chiptune
audacity for recording & processing (it's free)

i've heard good things about sibelius, if you just want to work on sheet music and don't care about audio production

mixcraft is crap, garageband is crap. i haven't used anything else

rosegarden has a windows build that's free, just for what you're talking about i think it'd be fine. for serious tunemaking ableton live or fl studio

I've seen LMMS recommended before as an alternative to FL Studio. No idea where it is quality-wise, but it's free...

i'm skeptical of any GPL "free alternatives" to multimedia software but it doesn't look too bad & the UI is definitely a step up from FL in the cleanliness department. i'll have to try it

ultimately the tools you use don't matter as much as the ideas you express and as long as your DAW isn't crashing every 5 minutes or corrupting your project files it's probably usable as a means to an end

some of the most influential records in contemporary electronic music were made by chopping up samples in sony soundforge

I use FL Studio, Virtual DJ and Mario Paint.

A strange combination, sure, I find making remixes a lot easier with the three of 'em. Mario Paint isn't really necessary unless you and add some NES sounds to your remix/track.

you can just do this with the super mario world soundfont in fl studio, lol

Thanks for all the responses everybody.

I have used FL studio for a few years now, and despite being looked down upon, it's actually a pretty sweet program, and it's fairly cheap compared to most other music programs...

Most people say that ableton live is superior to (quite a lot of music programs), but really all it comes down to is preference. There's Cubase, Reaper, FL, and a whole ton more, so go with whatever you want; I'm just gonna recommend FL studio because I'm biased.

Avid Pro Tools and FL Studio