Essential Stuff? Options

[macshark]

Hello all. My name is Scott, and I am a newbie. Hello, Scott...

Okay, now that's out of the way, let me say that I have dug thorough this entire site as well as others, and I am still a little (lot) confused about the necessary equipment.

I have used/demo'd - Ableton Live, Bias Peak and Deck, Spark ME, Storm, Reason, and Metro. Haven't tried PT or Logic yet. I am on a G3 slot-loading iMac, OSX 10.2.4. I may be upgrading the computer w/in the next year if necessary.

All I want to do is record electric guitar and vocals into my imac, and do multitrack and editing on the computer. Also, I need some type of drum machine, beats, etc. Basically just looking to record my own songs for my own use (for now).

I don't have any other hardware (keyboard or midi-controller), but would consider getting an inexpensive one.

After all that, finally to the question at hand. What do I need to effectively do this? Live, Deck, and Metro seem to be the same to me in that they will let you multi-track. I like Spark a lot, and don't see where Peak is any better as a pure recorder. I could not figure out Storm or Reason. Not sure I really need all the midi-synth stuff. But I do NEED drum tracks.

Any suggestions, on software and hardware that I should look into?

Sorry for such a long request. Thanks.

Scott

[rickenbacker]

"Again, thanks again to both of you. You'll be remembered on the liner notes of my first CD..."

Great! My time here has finally paid off!

PS...
Although you're busy saving your pennies for Reason, you have bought an audio/midi interface in the meantime, right? Otherwise you're going to have a job recording anything.

One bonus for you with the Big Box is you could probably use the EXSP24 sample player to spin in sampled drums off the accompanying CDs or get more samples off the web etc. So you'll be able to get some drums in your songs that way.