Yes, I am reviving an older thread, sometimes people call it "NecroThreading"...anyway, wanted to just share here there's some really affordable 'how-to' videos on every aspect of music production and even DAW-specific and vsti-specific on
http://www.groove3.com/str/ and aside from individual dvd's one can also get access to watching as many as you want online.
My DAW of choice is Reaper and it's via an excellent dvd I purchased done by a very knowledgeable man, covering invaluable information. When you purchase a hard copy of any title you immediately also have access to watch it on their website. They even sent me a free comprehensive dvd on "Songwriting Theory Explained". They have various notable engineers that have inexpensive resources to help with "Mastering" to different types of synthesis programming tutorials.
If this revived thread helps even one other person then was worth resurrection, as learning a DAW can be quite daunting and when it's not pragmatic to attend aforementioned schools, where more times than not one would need to take prerequisite classes as in college, getting "straight to the meat and potatoes" of what you need to learn is an excellent option with this suggested website.