Yo Afrosnatcher! Imagine that you went on a medical board and asked how to do an appendectomy. OK. I got some scalpels, and some sutures, a bunch of gauze sponges. a circulating nurse, sterile gloves, gown and mask, and an operating room with bright lights. So how do I remove that appendix anyway? OK, there's a 1000 page textbook on basic abdominal surgery, with an entire chapter on appendectomies. Guess what, nobody will type it all out for the would be doctor. They'll tell him to read the textbook, or actually go to medical school.
Aside from a few cables and a good set of headphones. you have described a signal chain that *will* allow you to record stuff. If you want to mix it down afterwards, you'll need some studio monitors. Don't do it with headphones. And unless you already have a well prepared acoustic space, you may find you are just recording traffic noise, lawnmowers, etc. I'm trying to tell you something useful, dude, but I don't know what it is you don't know. I could say- you stick the mic in front of the talent. Then you click on the red button that says "record". Then click on "play" and be *very quiet*, but I'm really not trying to bust your balls.
The stuff you have described will work to record stuff, up to the limits of the number of inputs you have on the mixer and the soundcard, but it might take *you* a couple of years to become a tracking engineer.
Here's one point that may be useful to you- A mixer allows for a lot of different signal routing arrangements, and not all mixers were created equal. There's basically 3 things you can do with a mixer and a soundcard:
1. You can mix all the inputs down to 2, the main outs, going into the line ins on the soundcard. That works fine for very simple stuff, like stereo recording, but if you have a bunch of inputs, and the mix is wrong going in, you're screwed, because you can't change it later.
2. You can record each part separately, same as #1 above, and then mix it down in the computer software. This is usually more effective for studio recording, but you need a headphone distribution amp and headphones for you, as well as anybody who's playing, so they can hear the tracks that have already been laid down, and themselves.
3. You can use channel inserts and aux sends (if the mixer has them) to send the different signals to separate inputs on the soundcard and record them as separate tracks simultaneously. This rocks, but poses certain problems. You are limited by the number of channel-specific outs on the mixer, and the number of ins on the soundcard. The biggest problem with that, called live studio recording, is that you are likely to experience microphone bleed, where mics pick up more than one signal, making it hard to separate the signals. The big studios solve this by having separate rooms with lots of cables running through the walls. You also need more mics, more cables, more headphones, in other words, more money.
Here's hoping that helps. You're right. You're in over your head. People deal with that in different ways. I was in over my head 3 years ago, and I got through it, but not without making some mistakes. It's hard to help you right now, because you don't know enough yet to know what questions you need the answers to. So either chicken out, give up, and go to a studio, or keep asking dumb questions until the answers start to make sense. It's up to you. Sometimes going to a studio is the right answer. It depends on what you're trying to do. I'm there for you- say $30 an hour.- Good luck.-Richie