theyesman

Getting Started - Total Newbie Alert!

Hello everyone. I'm new here - please be kind to me!

A little background information...

About 18 months ago I bought my first mac - an iMac G5, 1.8GHz, 768MB RAM and a copy of Logic Express V7.01 with the intention of moving my songwriting from an 8track recorder to computer.

However university got in the way and its only now I am getting a chance to get back into writing songs seriously again.

What I want to do is be able to record songs using guitars, bass, drums (roland td8 vdrums) and vocals into my mac.

Can someone please advise me on how to go about this -

what kind of midi interface do I need?
do I need some kind of preamp?
can I plug guitars straight in or do I need to mic amplifiers?
if I want to not use the vdrums can I just program the drums?
etc, etc.

So to summarise:

I have an iMac G5, Logic Express, a load of 'traditional' instuments and absolutely no idea how to make them all work together.

I'm not trying to make mega high quality, polished audio yet, I just want to be able to get my ideas down and mess around with them.

Any advice would be absolutely brilliant. Thanks.