dubkitty wrote:what i want to do is get the Lead II, spend the necessary time working my way into its capabilities, and then devote time to 1. generating new ideas that don't rest on nice, pretty tones and 2. dividing time between the Lead II and my acoustics to generate ideas for songs as i also try to piece lyrics together i've always struggled with lyric writing because i didn't know what to say other than in songs which were inspired by particular people or thoughts, but now i feel like i have a palette of love, loss, joy, pain, righteous rage at my own flaws and those of the world around me, and that pesky dialectic between the certainty of onrushing doom and the desperate need to find something, anything, to make life worth living in the face of the ever-encroaching darkness for subject matter. i want to create songs and music which people can use as tools, pillows, weapons, or flowers, and music which creates environments where the listener can retreat for respite from all the horror. that's what my favorite artists, from Mingus to the Dead to Radiohead and MBV have done, and i would also like my work to be of use. i still believe that music can be a transformative shared experience that raises consciousness and thus helps to, erm, "save the world" as Phil Lesh said about the Dead in 1968. i just want to do something good in this world that will reach people more than 100 feet away.
Step 1 is making music and capturing it. The more you do it, the better it gets. Plenty of bands have released songs, evolved them, and released them multiple times. Go for it.
even so, I know that good things are coming up 
there are better options though except when they used to cost $40 or something