recording is a funky craft, and honestly, you’re going to get much more mileage by practising and training your ears than by spending time studying it. yeah for sure read a book or two or run through youtube tutorials to get the basics, but it’s best to get your hands on a cheap mic and start playing around.

the biggest biggest thing that goes into it is the performance. seriously. record a better take and it’ll mix better. past that though, the biggest thing is your mic positioning and while you will want to google some basic strategies to get started, your ears won’t be able to hear the differences quite as well until you’ve put some time in. it’s like cooking; if you’re new to it and you taste your soup, you can maybe tell something’s off, but it’s harder to know what it might be missing. after some practice you can taste which spice is missing, and you can hear if your mic needs to be closer, further, angled differently, or pointing at a different part of the instrument. amps are very different beasts (and imo easier) than acoustic guitars.

if you’re just starting out putting your demos onto your computer, the software doesn’t matter all that much. even audacity will just allow you to do everything i’ve said. if you’re talking about mixing or producing your own full song, that’s a bit of a different skill and then you’re going to need to learn how to use a DAW. garageband is good for beginners, pro tools is industry standard from what i know, and ableton is known for its performance and looping capabilities. i use ardour because i’m a free software nerd. there’s a lot to understand here so you’re going to need to put some time into learning how to use it or just brute force playing around until you come up with something cool.

i do encourage you to play around. i’m a longtime player of a few instruments but dancing with digital audio is just so much fun. i am not a professional though.