Recording question..

Think about recording onto a tape first and then troubleshooting from there? It could save you some meaningful playtime, so that once you've got all your kinks worked out, you can record more trouble free. Just play your tape through whatever amplification/microphonics you'll be using. It won't be identical, of course, but you could weed out alot of the trouble, without recording, playing back, troubleshooting, recording, playing back, troubleshooting, etc. Get what I mean?

 

What is EQing

And I have no tape player..

 

anything that lets you adjust bass/mid/treble. you can adjust frequencies of your guitar and vocal, for example, to bring each (or one) out more. Acid will let you eq, btw; I'm just not familiar with it so can't tell you how.

as far as determining if there's a bigger issue going on; record with nothing plugged into your computer. the noise you hear is coming from your soundcard. now hook up your microphone cable up without the mic attached and record. if you have a significant noise increase, something's wrong with your cable. if you don't, hook up your microphone and see how it sounds when recording silence. if it still sounds fine (not too much hiss) but you record and it still sounds like utter crap, then 1) your input levels are set too high, 2) your microphone is fried, or 3) your expectations are too high, lol

 

first we must determine whether you were singing/sounding badly but singing on pitch, and whether your brother was being sarcastic.

 

I've got an extra question if anyone feels like answering...

wut are some of the most effective and inexpensive progs. for recording with a mic...
Plan on recording electric bass, Acoustic Cello, and some percussion, something like a bongo.

are certain progs or mics more qualified for recording acoustic, or electric, or percussion?

 

Yes... I'd say for acoustic stuff use a condensor mic, but I wouldn't for vocals, unless it's like one of those diaphragm kinds, but those are kind of expensive and overkill for most peoples needs on here. Percussion, I'd say condensor/diaphragm... Shure or AKG make good stuff. You can always find nice used ones on ebay, or you can get mics at your local radio shack that'll work fine... I'm sure they could help you out, but probably wouldn't know a whole lot about recording, so I'd rather take a trip to a music shop and tell them, if it's a good place they'll help you out, but I don't believe in Guitar Center. I never set foot in those places.

It would also depend on how big your amp is and the room size and all of that good stuff but you can pretty much figure that kind of thing out by personal preference, mic placing/experimentation, and logic. I have a broomstick I mount to the ceiling with rope and this hook in my bedroom and I have a $15 mic hanging off of it that I use... I can raise or lower it, and my floors are thick solid oak. I've recorded in my bathroom (analog). I want to get a longer cord and try in there sometime with my computer.

Certain programs are better than others... I like Cool Edit Pro. There's a few out there on http://www.download.com and whatnot that have free trials. You can try them out until you find one you like that suits you best. I get good results even just using media player. There's so many ways to do it. Oh, and also, a good soundcard is a nice thing to have. I've heard a lot of people using soundblaster, but I feel M-Audio makes the best for the money. You really can't go wrong with one of the Audiophile soundcards. Last time I was looking at soundcards a few months ago, I think they were going for $99 or so. You cound probably get a used one for less.

 

Could be anything- there could be a lot of noise added to the signal, or it could be recorded with too low a bit-rate or sample rate (or both). What microphone and programme did you use? Did the microphone plug straight into your PC sound card via stereo mini-jack? That really is not the way to record because computers will always add noise to the signal that way, whatever you do. If you really want to send your signal straight into a computer you'll want to get yourself some special hardware designed to work with the software you're using. But if that's the way you want to do it, I'd really recommend you getting yourself a small multi-track mixer and record straight to stereo - and then at least the noise only gets added once, and not once for each track.