Advise on equipment

[chazz]

I haven't bought the Vocalrelease program yet, but I will.
In the meantime I've been doing some practice of my own and I don't feel like I suck totally, but I'm no Jon Davis either.
The screaming part I can't do yet, well I can but my throat hurts like hell after 5mins or so and I lose part of my voice, which isn't good.
So I will have to learn the proper technique for that, either by Vocalrelease or by a teacher.
Anyway, I would like to buy some cheap/not-too-expensive equipment so that I could do some recordings on my computer and see what I sound like with a proper mic and so on.
I mean with this mic I bought for 2bucks I sound like crap, you know like some punk trying to sing but doesn't succeed too well, but then again maybe I do sound like that hah.
At least I don't hear myself that way...
It's like comparing a home made video with a professional made one, you know?
The quality is a _little_ different.

Oh and please throw in a recommendation of some good recording program too, would be cool to do some tweaking and stuff to my voice too.
Thanks!

EDIT: Yay, half of my post.. my internet died like 3 times in a row!

 

[chazz]

Giving this a small bump then to show which one of my threads are alive, I accidently double posted because my internet connection died twice!

 

[chazz]

Anyone?

 

[Episteme]

Good recording program would be Cool Edit Pro 2. Cool Edit Pro is pretty easy to use. I use CEP2 to record my riffs and songs to send to my band members, exchanging songwriting ideas. But a much better program to use would be Cubase.

I'm not much of a vocalist myself, I do backup growling and singing harmonies in my band though. If you were to buy a microphone, try to purchase a Shure SM57 or 58, they're industry standard microphones and they really show you how your voice sounds like live. A 2 dollar microphone won't do you much good.