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Sounds like your computer was made for music. That is a nice setup, you should be able to run quite a few software synths with it along with a bevy of effects (but you will always run out of power).
For right now, if I were you, I would find out which softsynths are generally regarded as the best for trance. IMHO, Z3TA+ is one of the best out there right now along with Albino and Pentagon among others.
Then, if money isn't an option for you, I would get a nice effects card, like the TC Powercore or UAD-1. What this does is frees up your processor and gives you quality reverb, delay, etc. effects that, while probably not on the level of a Lexicon verb, are quite good.
When people refer to a sequencer, they are primarily talking about a program that allows you to arrange your audio and midi data into a, well, a sequence. That sequence eventually can become a song, right! Sequencers have virtual mixers that allow you to control the volume, panning, effects sends, etc. of each track in the song (including tracks from any outboard synths that you have connected to your audiocard). Let's say you draw in (or enter with your keyboard) midi note data on one of your hardsynths, well, the sequencer will send this data from the sequencer through the midi interface to the synth, that synth then processes the commands and spits out the sound that is directed back through your soundcard and eventually to your speakers. But there are many more ways of setting things up as you will see. Sequencers do much more but you get the idea. The most popular sequencers are Cubase, Logic, Nuendo, and Sonar (among others). Other programs like FruityLoops and Storm are much more intuitive and allow more pick-up and play, to use a video game term, but do so at the cost of less flexibility (although you could conceivably make an entire song with Fruity that eventually makes it into the next billboard top 50 if you really know what you are doing). I am not qualiified to say any one of these are better than the other, but I myself have Cubase SL.
Lastly, I would recommend getting one or two hardware synths. For trance, the voting is in at places like Futureproducers.com and many people agree that the Novation Supernova II, the Roland JP8000 (or its rackmount brother), and the access virus b or c is the way to go. There are many more options of course but these synths are very, very popular within the trance genre. Like it was said above, hardware synths tend to boost creativity, at least in my opinion. And there is something about twisting real knobs that can't be substituted.
Finally, I would get a midi controller keyboard to control all of your software synths and the hardware synths you buy that don't have keys. A new one that I personally would love to have is the M-Audio RADIUM, it's a five octave controller with 8 sliders (which you can use to control parameters in your sequencer of softsynths) and 8 knobs. What a deal!
www.tweakheadz.net is a good place for newbie info, as is samplecity.net and futureproducers.com. Sorry, I would have many more links but I just reformatted and forgot to save my bookmarks.
Ok, well, I hope this helps. Keep asking questions and eventually you'll be a trance god. You'll find that producing is a lot of hit and miss, but with fewer misses if you ask good questions. It is also about experimenting, you'll more by experimenting than anything else, especially when it comes to sound design. And finally, to get great ideas for music, you have to listen to a bunch of it, and not casually listen but critically listen. Good luck.
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