Jingles. soundtracks wannabe

The SBLIve is a great way to start, especially if you have the RAM required to run things like a 23MB piano soundfont. (I love my virtual Steinway). I don't think much of the onboard reverb and chorus effects of the SBLive (indeed EAX really annoys me) so you are best off turning all your midi tracks into Audio WAVs and adding effects either from an external box, or in software like Cool Edit or Wavelab. I'm a big fan of compression on both individual tracks and a complete mix, but it might not be as important for your needs. As I said, it's certainly worth starting with. Buying a real Steinway or Supernova synth just doesn't make sense in the days of software synths. Which sequencer are you planning on using?

I've got plenty there - the (somewhat customized) soundfont file I use is about 90MB.

I have not messed with either of those SBLive effects yet.

...

stupid question - what exactly is 'compression' in this context? I've seen Snabbu mention this, too, and I just haven't got sufficiently involved in all of this to full look into it.

I assume by 'sequence' one means the act of pulling all of the tracks together into a single song. I've got a shareware one (MultiQuence) right now from the developer of GoldWave (which is also the wave editor I've been using). I have not considered any others yet.

Unfortunately, there is an entire industry devoted to exploiting people just like you. What a lot of people don't realize is that broadcasters pay blanket fees for the music they use and somebody gets paid substantial residuals. There are no 'minor leagues,' everybody gets paid the same. The only way you can ever get paid fairly is by pitching something better than the other guy directly to the sponsor. Otherwise it's a matter of relationships and favoritism and in that world people buy out your rights for a pittance putting all the money in their own pockets.

This in fact happens to be the 'new business model' our Internet 'buddies' want to change the copyright laws to support which will force most recording artists and composers into 'work for hire.'