Gary - thanks. I think maybe I just need some experience so I can get the hang of things,

Ed - I think I'm really asking two questions, and I think I've got the second one the wrong way round. It would be useful to me if I could turn real sound into midi, but I can't play keyboards (I'd love to learn, but there's so many other things on my list!), and I'm not a brilliantly fast guitarist, but good enough to record tunes that way. I am not going to buy a guitar synth! I understand how midi works - in fact I thought it up myself in the mid-sixties, when there was no way I was ever going to afford a computer! - so I know why it's not a straightforward process.

I hadn't even thought about distributing stuff on the net. That's a good goal to work towards, I think.

Steve