I'm New, New, New., Bill Nelson, space music, and ambient Options

[Turner]

First: sorry for the long post. I type fast but speak faster..

Ok about me being new... I've been an amateur musician for about 15 years (hack.. cough) and have always wanted to "get my thing together" in sound but am only now really considering doing it via computer. More about this shortly.

Bill Nelson: The best musician nobody's ever heard of. Wide-ranging styles but what I'm interested in are his instrumental/multilayered guitar bits. (By the way, if you are familiar with his stuff, I'm trying to find out what effects he uses..)

Space Music: John Serrie, Vangelis, and so forth.. you know, planetarium music.

Ambient - Old School! Think Music for Airports.

Ok, back around to the start then. I have guitars and drums, a midi keyboard (Casio CTK-601.. pretty nice actually), a Blue & White G3 400 with lots of ram, and a PIII 1.2 with a bit less ram. I have ACID and Guitar Tracks 2 (gonna sell that one) on PC, nothing to speak of on Mac. Midi cables.

Here's what I've been searching for: a way to be able to compose 5-10 minute ambient bits which I can "automate" - for lack of a better term. What I envision is some type of sequencing in which I can "tell something to happen" for a given duration - like a 30-second loop which I can "tell" to split into octaves and dissipate after every 12 bars or something... (sorry, I can't really explain it better immediately).

Additionally, I'd like to be able to play my guitar (or provide other audio input) and have it recorded directly into the computer, but I'm trying to figure out whether I need to use a physical pedal for real-time effects (rather not) or if there is a suitable computer-based system. I know of the USB-to-pc stuff, but am not extremely familiar with it.

Ideally, as far as a computer-based system would go, I will say that a system that lets me >order< the effects is key. In other words, I can either put the delay before the reverb or after the reverb. (Is that asking too much?)

That's enough for now I think, and more than I've been able to answer on my own by searching.

Your help is enormously appreciated.

Cheers,
Andrew