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i need helpo finding programs to record with..........free or NOT free.
any suggsestions???

if they require hardware, specificly what?

please help!!!

i have and used cakewalk sonar 6 and have a multimix8 alesis but i want to sell the alesis because i think its primitvie but i could be wrong? i need an opinion to figure that out as well. Because im lookin to sell it possibly in order to buy a shoegazer or rocket.

You could try and find a free copy of ableton somewhere.

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Or maybe audacity?

i'm a cubase man myself, it took some hitting my head against a wall to figure some things out, but it's solid, i'm still on sx 2. in the past i've used both fruity loops (cheap) and KRISTAL (free) and found them both effective, and good for my wallet.

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/index.php

a good link that lists more options is:

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/cat/MULTITRACK_RECORDING/

for computer hardware i'd recommend something over 1 ghz with 512 ram to generalize, but 2 ghz and up would be better, your alesis, which i don't have experience with, but looking at the descriptions, should do a fine job unless you're having problems with it? is it the firewire or usb variety? i prefer an interface with firewire over usb, i've heard and seen too many problems with usb interfaces to rely on them. but i'm sure they work fine for many people. if you sold it you'd either have to use the basic soundcard input on your computer, which i don't really recommend, i mean, it will do the job, hell, i've used it for years, but there's no assurances for sound quality. or buy a new interface, which completely defeats the purpose, if you are selling your current one to fund some pedalage. i use a firepod and it's worked great for me. almost every interface i've researched has had some amount of people screaming about what a giant piece of shite it is. which leads me to believe that either audio interfaces are notoriously shoddy, or that people, no matter what their computer experience have a universally difficult time setting them up right.

but ultimately, in my opinion, gear is gear, you get what you put into it. you could plug your guitar straight into your computer and create masterpieces, as long as you know what you want and understand the equipments limitations.

and if i've been condescending, or stated the obvious, no disrespect was intended, just attempting to cover things, not knowing your experience. hmmm, and i ramble, sorry about that.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ is worth learning. you didn't specify windows or mac, it happens to work on both

get a USB audio interface to take some of the audio processing load off your CPU. That will result in less lag and better recordings. If your computer has a firewire port, get a firewire recording interface, it'll have even more bandwidth andwork better, plus it won't be competing with your keyboard/mouse for bandwidth on the USB bus

Mics are nice to have, they require a preamp. Some audio interfaces have builtin mic preamps, otherwise, the ART Tube StudioMP is a cheap tube mic preamp that works great that I can recommend.

mixing is best done on studio headphones, not computer speakers or iPod earbuds, as you want a flat frequency response when you're mixing. studio headphones are cheaper than getting really good studio monitors. plus you're less likely to mix the song too loud/compressed, your ears will know if you use headphones, imho

if you want to do decent recordings, buying these few bits of hardware will help. it's possible you'll want to wait and save up for recording gear. in the meantime you can learn audacity with your computer's soundcard's line-in/mic port.

hope this helps!

I used cubase for sequencing and sampling. For the actual audio recordings, I tend to use easier/simpler stuff, generally Goldwave, which I like a lot.

If you have a Mac or are thinking about getting one, Garageband is great for starting out (free with the computer). Apple also has Logic Express 8 and Logic Studio (more features/capabilities than GB). I use Logic Express 7 and like it a lot. I also like Reason 4 and Audacity is good for some things but I don't use it that much (can't beat free though)!

All those programs mentioned above benefit tremendously from a USB MIDI keyboard. Something simple like the M-Audio Oxygen V2 is perfect because it doesn't take up too much space but still gives you some knobs to program.

If you want to record guitars and stuff then you will need an audio interface that has some inputs/outputs. Look into getting a firewire capable interface (higher transfer rates = record more tracks at once) if you need to record a band at the same time. Otherwise a USB 2.0 interface should be fine. Good brands are PreSonus, some M-Audio, Line 6, lots of good ones really.

Once you get into recording on your computer you can really spend a lot of money. It gets addictive!

Have fun!