What do I need to record music on a Macbook?

I want to get a Macbook to record music, as it already has Garageband, and you can add a lot of different instruments to it. I want to know what I will need to buy besides the macbook to record guitars and vocals, and even drums and bass tracks and put them all together in a final mix? I am in a band that wants to start recording our songs, and since I am getting a Macbook soon, I want to know what else I will need to get the best recording of our guitars.

 

id try audicity for windows and try to get it to run with wine (also freeware)for mac. Its a freeware professional level audio editing program. Id get microphone splitter and set up different microphones around the band in a soundproof room and such and maybe a keyboard that can link to a computer, a program for cd label makers, maybe a usb lightscribe burner to make your cds more professional as macbook doesnt have lightscribe on it. Probably lots more but thats what I could think of. A high resolution printer for cd inlays might be helpful too. For guitars I think I saw something that supported jacking a guitar directly into your computer at thinkgeek.com, cant get much better than that.

 

If you want to record lets say someone on drums, guitar, bass and microphone all at once, I'm pretty sure you're gonna need an external mixer(usb would be nice) so that you could get all of them into garageband onto seperate tracks.

Unless you just want to use the internal mic in the macbook, but I doubt you want that

 

If you use the internal Mic, you'll get crap results. You want at least 4 channels for the drums itself, preferably one channel per piece though.

Keep in mind, if you buy a good input unit, it may come with ProTools.

Check out some M-Audio or digidesign stuff, and get what you can afford. If you cheap out, the drum tracks will sound weak.

 

Dustin_D, go to http://www.pearldrummersforum.com/ and ask for audio equipment from those guys. I am a drummer myself and visit that site fairly frequently. I think they will be able to help better with the hardware needed for recording.

 

You, my friend are one of the main reasons why Windows stays supported and Macs get the short end of the stick. In this case, Macs software is better for music recording.

The OP wants to use Mac OS X and Garageband and Garageband is an excellent program, many of my musician friends use it.
I would recommend to the OP to get a decent keyboard with line in for Mic. The line-in on the Mac is not a Mic input and it will be only low level.

 

Either Garageband or that other program, pro-tools?

What do you mean by a new keyboard? An entire new keyboard? Or a mixing board? I was thinking of getting a 12 track recorder, can I hook that up through the Macbook? Because I can plug up to 4 instruments in it (two guitars, a bass, and vocals) and then do drums as well as four different mics.

 

Uhh, I dont think you need to get an external recorder, but yea a mixer is what you'd need to either mix all of the lines into 2 channels, or if you get a usb mixer, you can send more channels to into the pc then just 2.

So more channels = more mics and instruments

 

Well I wanted to get it so I could record the tracks on it, or hook it up through garageband. Then if I didn't have my mac set up I could just use the soundboard...they're not too expensive now a days, which is good for student musicians .