I presently own the ibook G3 800Mhz with 640 ram. I am about to buy the korg microkorg which is a mini digital/anologue synth with midi capabilities.
I will eventually be upgrading to either an Imac or a powerbook sometime in the next 8 months.
I am mostly interested in making experimental electronica, ambient, future lounge, jazzy beats, drum and bass, trance, ect, ect...
I basically want to start with the bare minimum for a desk top computer based music studio. I would like to star out with one software solution for my needs. I would like to buy a software package that can make drums, effects, samples, layers?, and sequencing. Is Reason 2.5 my best bet for getting started.
I also want the program to be able to run on my current G3 ibook, and on my next upgrade which will be a G4.
I know Trent Reznors made his first NIN album with an anologue keyboard synth, and an old Mac.
I want to see what I can do with the most basic set up for electronica type music.
Any advice and help is extremely appreciated.
Thanks.
-Jason

Reason 2.5 will do everything you seem to want. You can't record live audio, but everything else is grist to its mill. Spend a good while getting to know it and you'll get a LOT more out of it - Propellerheads (Reason's developers) have a really good series of free articles on their website showing how best to use the various modules in Reason.

If you get Reason, also consider a couple of extra sample CDs - AMG have a really good range, all in REX format for instant time-stretching action. Check www.samples4.com.

You might want to look into something more like Logic's Big Box rather than Reason. Reason is really cool app for all that it does but unless you get another app of some type to record your Korg then you will never be able to use its audio outs and it would be merely a midi controller.

Reason to me is another sound tool to add to my compositions since I want to add things from external audio sources as well. If you don't care about using the sound of the Korg and don't think you will ever record vocals or anything to add to your music then Reason is a great do it all app.

The alternative is to get Reason and then get one of the cheap audio apps that allows you to record incoming audio from either the mic in or better yet... and audio interface and save the files as aiff to pull into one of Reason's samplers for use. It can be done but Logic would make this all a little more convenient and maybe more flexible too. That's my 2¢

So if I want to use my minikorg to play live over pre-made tracks, or to just record bass lines over pre-recorded tracks and layers.....reason would not be good for that? Logic's big box would make that much more simpler huh?
But then Logic's bigbox and reason together could be quite a little powerful set up for what I wanna do then right?

Also let me get this straight... I can play live with pre-recorded tracks on the bigbox with my minikorg and vocoder, right? And the bigbox can record it all and then I can use it to burn it onto a CD? Also can the bigbox make its own synth leads, bass lines, do layers and make drums? Does it have looping, sampler and effects capabilities?

And let me get this straight too: Can I use the minikorg to pre-record bass lines into reason? just not live? or will it jst be stand alone? And can reason be used to burn complete tracks onto a cd?

thanks for the previous advice and thanks for any additional help in clearing things up for me. Much appreciated,
-Jason

Big Box/Reason owner here. Yeah, it's a powerful combination, which I hardly take advantage of at all (but that's another story of which I'll spare you the boring details... )
Reason isn't just "not good" for playing live or recording audio over pre-recorded stuff - it just plain won't do it. No audio recording with Reason. Period. So Logic doesn't just make it simpler - it simply is capable of recording both audio and MIDI, while Reason is MIDI only.

Not sure exactly what you mean by pre-recorded tracks, but yes - if you have an existing piece of music, you can layer your minikorg and vocorder over it in Logic. There's no specific CD burning capability in Logic, but what you do is bounce the recording to create an mp3/aiff what have you and then burn to CD using another program (e.g. iTunes, Toast, etc.).

The Big Box comes with the es1 synth, the evp73 Rhodes and the exsp24 sampler player w/Xtreme Analog sample CD. So synth leads, no problem. Technically, the exsp24 can't create samples, but I think there may be a work-around for creating exs instruments... i'm not super keen on this stuff because most of my work is straight audio and the MIDI stuff I do I've just handled in Reason. Looping is certainly in the nature of any DAW and the version of Logic that comes with the Big Box (Logic Audio) has a number of built-in effects/plug-ins that cover most of the basics. (There are a lot more choices with Logic Gold and Platinum, but you can see if Audio meets your needs here.) Personally, I've been pretty satisfied between the native Logic plugs and the Apple Audio Units (especially since Quicktime 6.4, which brought on a multiband compressor).

To your final query - again, NO, you can't record audio into Reason. You can use the minikorg as a MIDI controller to create a bass line using Reason synth modules - but you can't use your on-board Korg sounds in a Reason composition. And just like Logic, you can export whatever you do in Reason as an mp3/aiff/wav and then burn a CD using third party software.

Hope this clears some things up. It sounds like you might have some confusion on how MIDI works, so you may want to check out this article written by our friend here Synthetic.

And oh yeah, if you're going to be recording any audio, you'll probably want an audio interface. At the very least, it sounds like you'll need a MIDI interface. Do some searching through the Getting Started forum here for recomendations, which are a-plenty.

BTW, what OS are you/will you be running?

yep... I agree with xingu totally... Reason and Logic together are a awesome combo but when it comes to audio recording... Reason just can't do it... it's not the best for sequencing pre-existing audio either... Logic has some nice featires that make looping and working with samples much easier than Reason but Reason is a sweet sound arsenal

Wow! that really hepls guys. Thanks a lot for clearing these things up for me. I am a bit misunderstanding when it comes to midi, so I will read that article synthetic wrote. It looks like logic might be the best solution for me to get started making a DAW. Digital audio workstation? if i am wrong, pleas don't flame me for my newbieness lol.

I just want to make simple ambient tracks with simple beats, and bass lines and synth leads. What i mean bu layering pre-recorded tracks...i mean makind a sequence then layering another sequence on top of it, like a synth lead over a drum beat...does that make sense....remember, I am totally new to this, and I do plan on doing a lot more reading and research before I attempt to truly understand any of this.
Thanks for the help everyon!

-Jason

Also, How about getting the prtools Mbox? Is that like a high quality soundcard/midi interface in one that comes with protools?
How would comparing that to the bigbox be?
-J

You'll get the hang of everything eventually. DAW - you are correct. Actually both Reason and Logic will let you layer a new track over an existing one, it's just that with Reason, you'll only be able to use sounds contained within the built-in instruments (or from additional sounds you get from sample cd's or downloads - you can find some for free, more for purchase - and then load these sounds into Reason...). I'll assume by bass lines you mean synth bass lines - if so, you could do it all in Reason - it's very suited to ambient stuff. Again, if you want to play bass lines using your Minikorg or an actual bass guitar, you'd need a program that handles audio recording (e.g. Logic).

As for the Mbox, I probably wouldn't recommend it in your case. It comes with ProTools LE software The general perception is that ProTools doesn't handle MIDI as well as other apps, but I can't comment on that myself. The Mbox only has audio inputs (no MIDI) so you'd have to buy a separate MIDI interface. There's just a handful of MIDI interfaces that "qualify" as compatible with the Mbox - that's the primary limitation of ProTools software - it's generally only compatible with Digidesign hardware and Digidesign plug-ins which are often pricey. Compared with the BigBox, you won't get the extra virtual synths, so you wouldn't be able to do what you're trying to out-of-the-box, so to speak.

It kinda sounds like Reason will be best for what you're trying to accomplish (unless recording live audio is your main priority). You could always get Reason, take some time to learn it (which I still haven't done ) and add your audio capabilities later on...

Yeah. Thats sound like what I am going to do. I'll problably start out with reason, and then eventually get logic. I can always use the minikorg as a midi controller with reason, so it wouldn't be like a waste of equipment with reason. eventually when i get something like logic, I will be able to record my minikorgs audio over tracks with it. Plus by then I will have also learned how to create my own sound and play the minikorg as well as reason.

Isn't logic's Bigbox a limited time deal or something, or will it always be an available package deal?
thanks,
-J