Good stuff mate, some peoples youtube tutorials I highly recommend:
-Dubspot
-TheSoundTutor
-Tom Cosm
Reason is as good a DAW as any, although I recommend at least trying the Ableton Live Suite 8 demo to see if it better suits your workflow. I've used Ableton for a few weeks now and it's one of the most intuitive software package I've ever used, it's brilliant!