I'm glad you like some of the music I produce. It's been a long road, I have put alot of time studying film music and composition (actively and non-active), different musical genres since I begun writing music in the age of 15-16.
It's easy to overdress music with too much sounds, melodies, chords and instruments. But with time I realized that the core of a good/cool/long-lived theme benefits alot more from less-but-better-sounding-instruments and to develop melodic ideas (with a more delicate hand). The "Less is more" works on everything! =)
Today I try to work with as much real instruments as possible; real piano, real drums, real flutes / percussion / guitars. But of course I work with ALOT of software too. =)
For the orchestral themes I use VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library) & East West Symphonic Orchestra Play, but also mix some other libraries in. And I tend to setup my own controllers, so it's easier to work with the dynamics of the melodic lines in realtime instead of programming (CH11 etc.) I also have a wind-controller connected to my Yamaha EX5 keyboard so you can "breath" the dynamics, like with a real flute/clarinette etc. Though I also use it sometimes while recording strings to "breath" the dynamics. Hehe, it works quite great too. It saves a bit of programming-time. Since a few months back I'm also using the iPad alot for controlling some of the music software....it's amazing with a touchscreen as controller.
I converted from PC to MAC a few years ago, since I had spent a fortune (and many years) getting PC's to run smooth. I was fed up with the windows platform for composing... Switched to MAC and Snow Leopard OS and everything has run smooth since day 1. So I would recommend getting a MAC in a heartbeat. =)
Also get a soundcard with good A/D - D/A converters if you are going to record instruments live....I suggest Apogee.
East West libraries are quite cheap and for a starter, I would go with them.
Today there are better libs around though, like Cinematic Strings & LA Scoring strings and East West Hollywood strings. But you can do alot with the good-old libs from East West and the VSL library is tremendously powerful to get accurate orchestral mockups. Even Kontakt 4 has some good orchestral sounds which I might add to a song.
Kontakt 4 is my main sampler, I've been using it since version 1 and grown comfortable with it.
I got a large custom library which I add new instruments too every year which I designed myself from all kinds of wierd sound sources (soda streamers, bottles, cash-machines, sitars etc.etc.) It's also kind of a trademark to have some of your own sounds popping up a little now and then throught your songs. To get your own unique sound.
It also helps with a good reverb. Since I nowdays work almost exclusively with LOGIC, I tend to reach for the Space designer within Logic. It's quite good. But Altiverb is the king to my ears when it comes to good reverb sound.
Though I'm using Logic now, I've been mostly using Cubase in the past, and some Ableton Live... Live is wicked, easy to do cool and spontanous electro stuff....
But I'm overall most comfortable with Logic since I work alot with scoring-sessions (notation), and it's so flexible in many ways. And comes packed with the best sounding vsti's in any DAW. The VSTi's that comes with Cubase sound very dull / lame.
Cubase 6 is nice too (still do some of my songs with Cubase), and Pro tools 9 is also great.
But Logic is the nr.1 DAW for me.
I hope you got some insight in all my blabber.
Cheers,
Mattias
MORNINGDEW MEDIA
http://www.morningdewmedia.com
http://www.morningdewmedia.com/luminati