Bedroom Songwriter Needs Advice, £700 budget for mic, interface and soft Options

[dubiousalibi]

Hey guys,

I've been writing and singing songs for quite a while now and it's about time I started to record them for posterity.

What do I want:

A basic clean recording that's easy on the ears and encapsulates the essence of the song. I'm not looking for broadcast quality, merely a high quality demo that I can play with and craft.

Here's what I have:

Powerbook G4 500Mhz (OSX 10.3)
512MB RAM
Extrenal Firewire Drive (80Gb)
Maton Electric-Acoustic (EM-325C)

Here's what I presume I need:

A condenser mic
Some software to manage and mix the tracks
An interface to get my guitar and voice into the Mac
A keyboard to add some background body to the song


Questions:

1) Have I forgotten anything major or significant in my 'what I need list'?

2) Will my PowerBook be sufficent to produce this?

3) Will £700 cover me?

4) Can anyone recommend the products to look at?


I'm quite a novice when it comes to recording, however, I'll pick it up quite quickly if I'm pointed in the right direction. I recently visited a music store with this quandry and he suggested a) Rode NT-1 b) Logic Audio (boxed package of 3) c) Tascam US-122 d) a dummy USB keyboard (sounds come from the Logic package). He didn't fill me with confidence, however is he on the right track? Other's have suggetsed that I look at the Digidesign M-Box instead.

Confused? Advice would be greatly appreciated.

[boze]

the answer to all your questions is 'yes'.

you have a good grasp of your needs and the comp will do you fine. the thing that starts to kick G4 and G3 macs in the teeth is plugins and virtual instruments, but you'll be plenty good for tracking audio and a few synth/bass/drum tracks to back things up.

the edirol pcr30 would be a good kbd choice- small with a variety of controls that can help with mixing on screen- and it's usb so no need for a midi interface.

you should maybe to go to HomeRecording.com to ask about your mic selection if you don't get lots of responses here.

i won't try to tackly your whole soundcard question. the m-box is highly rated although i personally would never pay that kind of money for a usb device. the fw410 and the newly arriving ego sys quata-fire look attractive. check this site even though the prices are in us$ you can see the products i'm talking about.

[dubiousalibi]

Cheers Boze. That's given me a good start. If anyone else has some input too that would be greatly appreciated.

[xingu]

I'd say your salesman is on the right track. I have a similar small home setup using a Behringer B-2 (woulda bought the NT-1, but I got the B-2 for a good deal on clearance), the Logic Big Box, and a Tascam US-428. I don't do much MIDI, but that's all handled by an old hardware synth. I'm quite happy with this combo and it was fairly easy to figure out. The MBox might be another route, but it has no MIDI, so you'd have a buy a separate interface (which will also compete for one of your USB ports).