Originally posted by
cjmaddy:
Realistic string sounds, and synthesized,
"music"? 
in the same sentence? ....
That, is a contradiction in terms! 
What is your definition of synthesized? If you mean truly generated by sine waves, then yes, it sounds like crap. If you are talking about samples, then the size of the samples matters a great deal.
Most television shows with strings do not have the use of an orchestra. They use extremely large strings packages like Garritan which ships on multiple DVDs. You get a 'scratch' version of the strings which are only about 50 megabytes. Then when you are mastering the music for inclusion in your film, TV show, etc., you swap in the 2GB sound samples and 'render' the finished music.
I have heard some very good strings in even a 2MB Screamtracker file.
P.S. Just to streamline the user interface, have you considered Bubbles as the first song on the list, and your Aquarium track as the second song on the list? That way you don't have to have separate keys, separate controls, etc. etc.