What do I need to record vocals to my computer?

What equipment do I need to record keyboards/vocals on my PC?

• I'm looking to record some music demos on my PC. Here's what I have so far: Old-ish Toshiba A200 with Realtek soundcard (I think) Cakewalk Pro-Audio Yamaha PSR2000 Keyboard Half-decent Microphone (which I'll probably upgrade to a Shure SM58 or similar) I am a musician rather than a "techy", but I do have the knowledge to connect my Yamaha keyboard to the laptop, and quite happily create MIDI-files, then record them as WAVs on Cakewalk. However, my knowledge ends here: How do I record vocals? Is it as easy as just plugging a mike into the laptop and recording a vocal track on Cakewalk? If I plug headphones into the laptop, will I hear what I'm singing/recording as well as what's being played back? If not, how do I achieve this in order to do a decent vocal over the music. Will the quality of the laptop's standard soundcard be good enough? I tried all this once before and just couldn't stop the whole result being either too quiet, or couldn't avoid distortion no matter how much I played with levels etc... Would this be soundcard related? Anyway, you get the gist. I have some great MIDI files which I've created that sound awesome through the speakers of my Yamaha Keyboard, I just need to know the quickest/easiest way of achieving half-decent results when recording them to a laptop and adding some vocals. My final aim is to dump them all to MP3 or CD and probably stick some on YouTube etc. If I'm lucky enough to get an answer, please don't blind me with science....I'm an idiot at all this...you need to explain it like I'm 3 years old!! lol Many thanks,

• Answer:

  Sounds like you are great at Cakewalk. I would take the audio from that and record a program I could mix and edit like MixPad and WavePad: http://www.nch.com.au/software/audio.html The distortion noise you hear can be from a ground loop. You can lift the ground on your computer and keyboards to test this theory out. If that clears it up, you need to use an isolation transformer to solve your problem so you don't have electrical issues. I'll leave some links for you.