dubiousalibi

Bedroom Songwriter Needs Advice

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.