TOTAL noob to music production. Advise please.

Right,could anyone give me any pointers. I'd love to start making acid techno but really don't know where to start. I've read the reason.3 thread but I've been slightly put off that given some of the replies. Have got a few links to look at when I get in (taa)

What I'm after,is a basic idea of products and price to get me started. I'd say that a budget of about £500 would be managable. Is that gonna get me what I need,or should i just wait till I have more cash. (there's nothing worse than buying sh1tey goods cos you're skint)

Not only music making software,but I'd also like to get into the art of the live PA. Stuff that can do live mixing on a PC (or both making + mixing) would be a bonus. Again,all in a budget of 500 quid,is this possible and if so,show me the light!!!

taa muchly.
me

If you want to do live PA's then I expect hardware is your best option - from what I've read software setups for PA's can be just too damn fiddly and unpredictable...

Software wise I would recomend Reason 2.5 - everyting you need to start with. Learn this inside out and you'll have some quality production at your disposal, then when you come up against barriers or see areas youd like to expand on ie vsti plugins etc then id suggest you make the transfer over to Cubase SX and get yourself tooled up with some good VSTi synths and effects (far too many to mention, you can get hundreds of uality plugins for free off the net)...

I'd totally recomend starting with reason (or fruity, which alot of people seem to use but personaly i cant stand allthough it does have vsti support)...another good program to look for is Orion Pro....thats got vsti support, im sure people can give you a better in depth breakdown of the options you have infront of you, i'm not the best at explaining this sort of thing but if you want ot chat then pm me and i can sort you out a with a CD with some demos( ;) ) on it ;)

Thanks,I've been given a link to a fruity demo. (sounds a bit wude) I'll check that out tonite when I get home. Re-hardware vs software. Agreed,I've been told that software can also be quite slow to react sometimes too. And has the added bonus of the occasional system crash.

Again,thanks.