strange buzzing twang?? That doesn't sound right. Might be a problem with your action. All strings have a twangy sound, but buzzing is either from not holding down the string hard enough or action being messed up.

To learn the ranges of bends. Try them with a tuner. Practice playing notes and bending them til the tuner says your playing one note up. Once you see how far you had to bend, you should see how to cut that in half to make a 1/4 bend. Practice your bends like this for awhile and you'll start to get it.