You didn't seem to ask about sound effects, but bfxr is easiest for that:
http://www.bfxr.net/For standard music...
There's click and create stuff like Otomata:
http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata (Lets you record)
Circuli:
http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/circuli (Less useful but is this sort of thing what you're looking for?)
iNudge:
http://www.inudge.net/etc...
There's Musagi:
http://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.htmlSuper basics of Musagi: When you open Musagi, you'll see a giant grid with time at the top. This is the song. You'll have a subwindow with a keyboard. This is a "part". The song is made up of parts. Click in a part to place a note (the keyboard to the left designates which note), click and drag to make the note longer. You can right click on the song to add a part. You can click and drag the parts to move them around easily.
Beyond that read the included documents.
That said, you may find it more complicated than famitracker.
You can also take a look at the audio tools here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/tools/ Ludum Dare is based around making games solo in a weekend, so I'd assume most things there are built for quick, easy music making.
I believe trackers are the somewhat common way to do things, so what is it about Famitracker that throws you off? I can come up with a bunch of other free trackers, but all trackers are somewhat similar and I find famitracker to be pretty easy compared to most.
As for how people make music, pixel art, and code stuff... usually it's just that they've practiced all these things, not because there's any tool that makes it easy for them.