Will This Work!?, will this setup work? Options

[lucky13]

Hey everyone just a little ..actually a lot of help needed. I want to start recording my band at home, have been considering a number of options and ive come up with this, bearing in mind im a student earning pittance and cant afford high end equipment. First up the 1.42 ghz mac mini. I really, REALLY want this as im going to be travelling a lot and dont have much space at home, it suits my needs/budget perfectly. So what kinda configuration of software and mixers would be appropriate for this? The band is a 5 piece death metal band (vocals, guitars, Bass, Drums and Keys) and we'd ideally like to all go through mic'd up amps rather than going directly into the computer..if you get what i mean :S I looked at the ALESIS MultiMix8 USB and reckon that if we plugged that into the USB of the mini mac and then plugged mics into the alesis ..hopefully we could record using garageband which is included with the mini mac. All the tracks would be done separately but we need the number of inputs on the mixer for the drums, cos its a bigarse kit n needs a fair few mics to sound good. Does this all sound like its got a cat in hells chance of working? is there anything that i might have missed? or have i got the wrong end of this whole recording malarkey!? help would be very much appreciated! thanks in advance.

Rory

[lucky13]

Thanks for the replies. I'll definately look into getting some version of logic, garageband was just a starting point but i can work up on that one. In terms of recording, the mixer is just a means to record the whole drumkit at once, it has 4 mic inputs and so if we recorded all the instruments one at a time, so like use all the mic inputs for the drums and do the drum track, when thats done unplug them and mic up the guitar, when thats done plug in the next guitar and do his part and so on... so like each instrument is done individually, therefore only using a maximum of four mics (for the drums) at any one time...? and then arrange that and mix it on logic.

In terms of mics, I have a PZM microphone, which has given me a decent sound before on guitar and bass drums, and i have a couple of sennheiser e835 which ive been assured are as good as the popular shures. so if i use the pzm for the bass drum, and the sennheisers (one for snare+hi hat, one for toms and one for cymbals) then use the sennheissers again for guitars and bass and vocals, possibly keyboard. wouldnt that work?

another question is about the audio interface ive heard about... does this set up have one? ..is it the mixer? or am i still new and thick? are there any which are decent yet relatively inexpensive, would the PRESONUS FIREPOD do waht i want to do?
cheers again!

Rory