I programmed sound on my C64 as well until close to the very end then I got that music notation program. You could write music with it, print out sheet music, etc. Yet it sucked at making something you could actually use in another program.

Renoise is definitely tracker based but it has so much crap built onto it VST support and I believe DAW as well. I've barely scratched the surface on it because it goes so far beyond what the early trackers did.

There are some good video tutorials. You might take a peak at some of them to see if it looks like anything appealing to you. It is a lot less expensive than most music software.