[bassdriver]

I agree with what chromium05 said. And: If you need help to decide which program you want to work with I would go to a good music store and let the seller explain the assets and drawbacks of different programs. and then book a workshop referring to the program you wanna work with. for sure all the midi programs work in the same way but it won't help you much to learn something about "reason" and then you won't find that function in "acid". I don't know your "midi school" but I know that most of the professional schools are pretty expensive and that the theme "dance music production" is maybe enclosing things that you are not interested in at the very moment (like copyrights, contract law uso). check the school's program, what exactly are they going to teach on 2 weekends.

chromium: the most helpful thing I can imagine is to learn about harmonics. its a very mathematic thing but once you see the scheme behind it, it will open doors to another world. I really like the punk attitude of hip hop (you definitely don't have to be a musician to do great hip hop tracks, on the contrary!!). but it's just great to know why things sound mellow or happy or mean.

two books I would like to recommend here (just in case that you guys don't know them already), both written by David Toop:
"rap attack" and "ocean of sound". these won't help much to produce but are very interesting and funny and show where the music, that we all work on, came from.