Recomendations On Purchases For Sound Engineering Options

[liquidh2o]

I've been spending the last couple months holding out on buying a mac with the rumors of the new g4's, so as soon as they were announced i purchased the dual 1ghz model(and went 3rd party w/ a 1.5gb ram kit).

My main reason for buying this mac is to start learning sound engineering. In short, i'm looking to make/edit music. As far as instruments go, the only one involved would be a keyboard(i'm taking piano lessons). I'm looking to get into more of the Nine Inch Nails, fatboy slim type of music, but i'm unsure as to what software/hardware i should buy to get started out. Also any literature on making this type of music would be helpful.

So this leads me to here, and hopefully some of you can help me out. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!