Garageband Questions, four stupid questions from a Newbie Options

Four GarageBand questions for you all. I am a newbie to digital recording generally, so perhaps these are not just GB questions. They might be digital recording questions. I thank you all in advance for helping.

1) I am using a Mackie Onyx board as a front end for real instruments and voice. No matter what I do, the levels seem too low, but then suddenly, when I turn the Mackie input levels up, I am clipping in GB.

By the levels seeming too low, I mean that the little squiggles that appear on the screen as I play acoustic guitar and sing seem small in relation to the space allotted and in relation to other pieces of music, some midi, some AIFF recordings of my band, that I have imported into GB and messed around with. Also seems smaller in relation to other applications I have seen (tho' GB is my first attempt to actually use one myself). Of course, the band has 6 people in it, so I guess it is logical that my solo recording squiggles would be smaller that the imported band squiggles. Nonetheless, the recordings I am making appear to be squiggling so small that I fear I have a problem.

BTW, a friend of mine, who should know, agrees that the inputs look low. (He's a long time professional soundman (and musician, but mostly soundman -- hey, they always work) who has since turned himself into a Embedded Systems Designer. He's one of those hardcore guys -- way back when, he turned in his Arp Odyssey and bought an Apple I.

I am playing a Martin LXME with a built in pickup. I thought maybe the problem was that I had an acoustic pickup with a battery running into a high impedance line in (i.e for electric guitar), but testing with acoustic pickups and with an electric guitar has shown that this is not the case. Besides, the voice is too "small," too.

So is this the way that GB shows tracks? Or am I doing to end up with too quiet of a recording?

2) The track volume level within the "track info" pop up menu is always greyed out. Why? I can still adjust the volume level on the little slider right next to where the track is recording, but it is too picky. Barely touch it, and it changes a dB or more.

3) While I am recording the squiggles are bigger than while I am playing back. There seems to be no reason for this at all. You can hardly even see my vocal track when it's on playback. Maybe once or twice there's a bump. I can hear the tracks, but there's nothing to look at.

4) I have too much string noise. I have turned the treble all the way down on the guitar (not on the board), but it still is noisy. I realize that part of this is just my lousy technique, but do any of you have any tips for reducing string noise? Aside from never ever changing strings? -- at least I am assuming deader strings will cut string noise. I don't really like flat wound strings, is that an option, though?

The electric guitar seems to have only a little less string noise, which I didn't expect. I thought that my admittedly tiny, weak little hands would have less trouble moving around and holding the strings on the electric. But still too much noise. So now I don’t know whether the reduction is because or whether it is something inherent in the acoustic guitar generally. And besides, I'm trying to lay down all this solo fingerpicking stuff for posterity, not play my old rock 'n' roll chops. So acoustic guitar would seem more appropriate.

Anyway, any info or directions to web sites discussing the problem of string noise would be appreciated.

Thank you thank you thank you

Kate

Thank you for your insight Kaboomchuck. I will keep on working at it.

Kate