I'm a singer/songwriter and I'd like some advice on how to make quality home recordings of my music. Basically I want to be able to record myself and the guitar. What equipment do I need? I don't want to spend a fortune on this.

For what you want to do, a simple solution is a 4-track cassette recorder such as those made by Tascam. I just bought one at a rummage sale for $5 and it works great! Then to get it on to a CD, you could download the free "Audacity" software from http://audacity.sourceforge.net and hook your cassette deck up to your soundcard's aux input using a cable from Radio Shack. If you like using computers, you could also record directly to the hard drive using Audacity and skip the Tascam cassete deck. You will get better recordings if you skip using the soundcard microphone or aux inputs and get a USB interface such as the Digidwesign MBox or Presonus Firebox, or you could get a USB microphone, plug it in, run the software and sing and play into the microphone, either at the same time or you could record the guitar on one track and the vocal on another track. You can even add additional tracks such as a second guitar part or vocal harmony. Another option that would work is to spend about $199 for a digital "field recorder" such as those from Zoom, Tascam, Yamaha, Edirol or Sony. You would be recording to a flash card and then when you download the recording to your computer, it is all ready to burn to a CD.

Don't even bother with Wiretap Studio. If you are just starting to record yourself, use Garage Band which comes free with every new Mac as part of iLife '09. The program is almost as full featured as Wiretap but has a less steep learning curve. So, 1. A New MacIntosh computer. 2. A good mic Good to go. Hope this helps.

Get a Mac, a mic and wiretapstudio (or a similar program).