Hey Don,

Yeah Jaws is basically a screen reader.
That said, it does so much more.
First of all it only works with Window based machines.
It is just software and resides in memory in the back ground interacting with what ever other programs you are running.

At it's basic level it speaks text that is displayed on the computer screen, and lets you know if you need to enter data or check a box or the like.
It will speak combo boxes, list boxes, edit boxes and so on.
Jaws will speak the color of the foreground and background of the current window with the press of a key.
You can have Jaws set to speak each character you type via the keyboard back at you, or have it set not to speak typed characters at all.

Jaws works very good with popular software out there like Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office products, Fire Fox, and the like.
Unfortunately it doesn't work right out of the box very good with programs like Sonar, BIAB, Power Tracks Pro and similar packages.
To use those programs takes a bit of tweaking by using built in macro routines to help Jaws work better in those situations.
You create scripts for each program you need to tweak.
A script is just a file of the macro routines needed for that program.
Unfortunately the average computer user would find it difficult to use Jaw's macro routines. They are more like a programming language.
Fortunately being a former programmer I am able to write alot of the scripts I need to make a certain program work better with speech.
For example I've been able to get about 90% of BIAB to speak for me using the Jaw's script language.
Same with Sonar.
I haven't tried Real Band yet to see how speech accessible it is with out having to write a Jaws script for it.

I'm not really sure Jaws would do much for you in your situation.
I bet there are software packages out there better suited for your needs.

I hope this helps
If there's Any way I can help, just let me know.

Tim