Hi Mr. Fretdancer,
You need….
Hardware:
– a PC (you obviously have one, well it should be a recent PC so forget your Pentium I 🙂 )
– an Audiocard (you can start with the onboard-card but soon you should get a better one to avoid noise while recording and get a better guitar-sound
– of course some monitors so you can listen to the stuff you´re playing but I assume tha´s not the problem
Software:
– a sequencer software (I use Steinberg Cubase, but there are others which might be good as well). With this software you can create songs by recording and editing audio-tracks and programming midi-tracks (drums, keys, loops etc)
– plug-ins/virtual instruments. First of all, you need some kind of Guitar-Amp-Simulation. You can of course use some hardware-FX-Processor with an Amp/Speaker-Sim, or you record your “clean” guitar-signal and use a software-simulation like Amplitube or Guitar Rig. If you do this, you can change the sound of your recorded guitar whenever you like, so it´s quite comfortable. Then, if you want to do synth-stuff there´s an endless list of virtual instruments which you can trigger with the midi-tracks. You might want some kind of virtual-drum-instrument; there are lots of products like bfd-drums, drumkit from hell and others. Working with them is quite simple. There are also some “alround-synths” which have some Bass-Samples, Piano-Samples, String-Samples etc. This is very usefull to start with.
So, you have your virtual instruments to program drums, maybe bass, synths etc. You can also record your guitar-tracks on top. Now you need some plug-ins to “mix” the stuff. Maybe you want some Reverb, Chorus, Equalizers, Compression etc. With Cubase, there comes a package of FX but well, they don´t sound very convincing. Might be ok to start with though. Later, I would suggest some Waves-Package or something similar.
There are also some usefull books about homerecording. If you are new to the subject, that could help also.
Have fun and sorry for my english 🙂
.
