Simple Set Up?, Own ibook800+microkorg... what software? Options

[rosiedog]

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

[xingu]

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?