Don't know where to start. HELP!

[beatstothedome]

ok i am confused as to where i should start when it comes to recording my music. I dont need anything crazy, im a guitarist and i'm learning the keyboards so i want something that will help me record these onto my computer. Right now what i've been doing is just making hip hop beats on fruity loops and recording guitar rifts over them and my friends freestyle to it (just to let you guys no what kind of stuff i do right now) I took a class in highschool on recording, we used garageband (i know its probably laughed at here) but i really liked it, probably just the simplicity of it. My teacher had an old decent mixer board that we plugged into the imacs via usb to record songs. What i liked was how the guitar and drums and vocals were all laid out on different tracks on garage band and it was easy to import stuff right into the program, and im trying to find something for pc similar to that.
my friend has a boss recorder that is fairly new but it records all the tracks directly to a memory card in the recorder and is a real hassle to use when its connected (usb) to the computer. Basically i want something that will record directly to my computer like garage band did, so please reccomend me what a good recorder or mixer board would be a good one for a beginner, i just want guitar, mic, and midi imports.
also, i have an old casio keyboard with midi outputs on it that i have connected to my computer for fruity loops, but i obviously need an upgrade since its probably from the 90's and wasn't designed for a computer, so if any of you guys have midi keyboard recommendations let me know. Thanks for the help

 

[mikemorgan]

You might check out the Line 6 KB33 I think it's called. It's a mini keyboard/usb interface. As for easy DAW software, lot's of people here recommend Reaper, but I prefer Cakewalk Home Studio for the simplicity of it and it's superior midi user friendliness.

 

[rayc]

What Mike said!!!

 

[beatstothedome]

alright thanks man thats exactly what i was looking for, the one you are talking about is the kb37 right? perfect price range, i saw the m audio ozone is like 50 bucks more so anyone prefer m audio over line 6?

 

[genesisariana]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using garage band. I use it every day. The newest version gives you just about the same amount of control and flexibility as other software that cost WWWWAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY more. Unfortunately, PC dosnt make a free software as cool as gband that actually comes free with it. I would suggest looking at the mac mini, its cheap, around $500, and includes gband free out of the box. Presonus and MOTU make great digital firewire interfaces, depending on how many mic/line inputs you want to record at the same time, keep in mind that gband allows only 8 at a time. Good luck.

 

[drfringe]

yeah use whatever you like, and for the input check out the alesis multimix 8 usb or something similar, a friend has one, and it allows 8 tracks via usb, into a mixer- plus it comes with cubase!

super easy but there are 1000s of devices these days

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Alesis-MultiMix-8USB-Mixer-with-USB-and-DSP?sku=630166

 

[guitar zero]

Sounds like you should look at something like this:
http://www.zzounds.com/a--2676837/item--ECHAUDIOFIRE4

Doesn't really sound like you need a mixer or 8 channel interface if you're just going to be recording one or two channels at a time. This unit has MIDI I/O so you can hook your keyboard up directly.

Of course you'll need some kind of software platform like the ones mentioned in previous posts.

I'll second the notion that garage band is pretty hard to beat for what you are doing. It won't sound professional, but you can make really good recordings with it, especially since their latest update added parametric EQ, better compression settings, and bumped it up to 24 bit recording. I realize you are using a PC, but if you had a mac...