Re: making music with just your computer?
@Big Gun
When you say creating music with your computer, I'm not exactly sure what kind of music you are wanting to create. If it's a wide variety of styles, I'd say go with QWS and sound fonts and the like, at least to start with, as Cae suggested in post 2. If that's not enough for you, you can migrate to something like Reaper. I myself use Reaper for the few things I know how to do with it, and QWS for the rest. If you want to create 8 bit style music, then MML is probably your best bet and I will explain what MML actually is below, since you asked about it. If, on the other hand, you actually want the computer to create its own music for experimental purposes, that is far outside my knowledge.
Now I'll get to MML. MML is not a specific way for composing music necessarily. I'd call it a set of conventions, or a basic language, that is adopted by various programs and then modified and shaped to fit the program's goals. Simply put, you don't simply write MML, you write MML with a certain program in mind, which is, more often than not, designed to make music for a specific sound chip. MML itself is written in a text file which you will put into the program so it can compile, or create, your music for the sound chip.
Because there are many sound chips and other things that programs could be written to compose for, MML is not a definite format. Think of it like writing English. If you are writing a novel for kids, you will use different words and make different grammar choices than you would if you were writing a doctoral thesis or a scientific publication about some sort of algorithm. But you're still writing in English. Same with MML. No matter what MML program or tool you use or what it supports, basic stuff will remain the same, but beyond that, things will very likely differ, not only in the MML commands themselves but the usage of the program. You will likely need documentation on the program to learn the MML commands or how to compile your MML data for the sound chip to listen to your music. The documentation for these programs is often in Japanese, since MML was and probably still is popular in Japan, at least in a niche community of techy musicians. Sometimes documentation can be successfully translated with Google Translate well enough to know what's going on, but sometimes you just have to look at examples and figure stuff out, or read alternative documentation in English written by fans of the program. Assuming you have adequate instruction, you will need a player for the sound chip's format so you can hear your music, and this is often the easiest part since most sound chips have music with their own file extension, so it's as simple as looking for a player or a plug-in that can play this or that file type.
I know it sounds complicated, but I figured I'd lay it out like this because nobody had described it to me in this way when I started, leading me to become very confused later. There are several MML tools and guides aimed to bypass everything complicated which are exceedingly useful. but if you collect MML stuff like I do, then you may run into things that don't have a guide for dummies, so having a bit of understanding of the foundation helps a little bit. In any case, I wouldn't recommend MML for a beginner to music or computer music, as it does involve more technicality and patience than most other options do, and the process of writing MML commands is simply just not intuitive to some people.
If MML is not your thing but you still want to create chiptune or 8 bit music or the like, you can try to approximate it with different tools with QWS or Reaper or other things. I won't talk about that much here, as this post is long enough and there is really no right way to go about it, since you are pretty much free to explore your options creatively at that point.
BTW with the discussion of midi saw and square patches. I wouldn't recommend using those for chiptune work; most of the time they do not sound nearly as good as something specially designed to make those sounds. The GM sounds are often perfectly fine in a mix, but I wouldn't wwant to rely on them to have a nice retro sound, or a fat analog sound, if those are what you're going for. That said, don't be afraid to give those sounds a look and experiment on whatever synth you're using; they do make good backbones for interesting effects if nothing else.
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