I need something to make/create/edit beats.
The best way to do that is to write them and play them. But that's probably not what you're asking.
There are plenty of programs that will make it easy to drag and drop little snippets of audio and string them together so they loop nicely. But Audacity isn't one of those programs. You'll pull your hair out trying to make music like that using Audacity. It's a multi-track recorder / editor, not a loop-based music production program.
I have very little experience working with loop-based music, but the program I used was Sony's Acid. It's highly respected, from what I can tell, and it worked very well, but it's expensive.
Someone is bound to mention Fruityloops. It's much cheaper, and has a shareware version, but I have no experience at all with it.
A program(s) to help me record/alter my voice.
Audacity can do this. Whether or not it's the program you'll want to use, I can't say. I have excellent experience with it and I know it's capable of making good quality recordings:
http://www.myspace.com/andylatham
If you want to use Audacity, the general idea is to get the music done and import it into an Audacity project, then record your vocals over it and edit the vocals to your heart's content.
I'm sure there are other programs you could use to do this, but I don't know of any open-source multi-track software that even begins to touch Audacity (except Ardour, but that's GNU/Linux only).
Good luck, let us know if you need any help. However, if you want general recording advice, please use a different forum (like Recording Techniques, or Audio Processing). This board is for help using Audacity 1.2.x under Windows.
