mixing help

[akdaniel14]

ok so me and my friend want to just mess around i guess and make some music. he freestyle raps. so the last few days ive played beats and recorded them on this little mp3 player i have that records then and then he freestyles into this mic. then after that we put it on audacity and put um together. we just started this so we are just figuering out how to work audacity and the stuff u can do with it. anyways we were thinking about looking into a synthesizing keyboard that records stuff so i can play the beat, he can rap, then we can put it together, and add some keyboard or other cool sound stuff from the synthezizer. ill be honest, i pretty much no nothing about the whole recording deal and all that electronic stuff pretty much. so my question, can anybody kinda guide us in a direction to a synthesizer thats not to expensive but will be good enough quality to work for us. i was looking kinda on musicianfriend.com and found one for $400 its a korg and it got good reviews. thanks for the help guys i aprreciate it. haha if we figuere it out ill post it on here but it wont be for a while i bet.

[Seafroggys]

you can use a midi controller to act as a keyboard, and use the computer to play the actual notes (such as sampled notes or soft-synth stuff) or get an entirely self sufficient keyboard, which you can just go straight from the line-out into your computer (or mic).

[some jive turkey]

Yeah,

There are a lot of nice software synths, that you can operate with any cheap keyboard as a midi controller.
Reason is a nice one, but it's a vast world of stuff you kind of have to jump into with both feet. not a program I would avise if you're just starting with computer based music.
Sonar has some pretty good soft synths that are simple to use.

[Seafroggys]

^^^ note that you have to pay for those.

I'm sure there's some nice soft synths for free though.

[some jive turkey]

*shrugs*
Well, the best things in life aren't always free. :)