Help, Please & Thank You!! (Beginner)

[asukru]

Hi guys I am brand new to all this but would really love to mkae my own cd so i need all the help and advice I can get.

So far this is what I have, I have been recording a lot of songs but the quality sounds like garbage. I usually go to youtube and play the insturmental of the song and sing along to it (i have no mic and just sing into my laptop - also the music comes from the speakers I have hooked up)

My questions are:

What do I need?
Should I download the intsturmental and then open it in Audacity then record my voice over it?
Should I buy a mic and if so what is a good one that is a reasonable price?
Do I need a mixer (to be honest I barely know what this does)

Lol as you can see I am beginner to all this so please don't trash me for not knowing what I am doing lol,

All the help is appreciated and thanks guys

[Irish]

Should I download the intsturmental and then open it in Audacity then record my voice over it?

Yes. That way you get the original instrumental, and not one that has come out through your speakers and in through a poor quality laptop microphone, picking up feedback and all the noise in the room on the way.

Should I buy a mic and if so what is a good one that is a reasonable price?

Yes. The built-in mic on a laptop is virtually useless for music.
Have a look at the microphone section on this page from the wiki
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... ng_Quality

Do I need a mixer (to be honest I barely know what this does)

Probably not.
If you are just using one mic, you don't need a mixer. If you have more than one audio source, e.g. a number of mics, or a mic and a keyboard, or any other combination, then you need a mixer to combine the signals from all of those sources (and adjust the level of each source) so that you have a single signal which you can feed into your computer.

PO'L

[asukru]

Thanks for all your help