vocals

I have been recording myself singing on a tape recorder, at the same time i was playing electric guitar pretty loud, but i would sing into the little mic spot on the recorder so my vocals could be heard and not flooded by the noise of the amp. Anyways the thing is that even thought i can hear myself when i play the recording when im singing i cant hear myself and when i listen to the recording i dont sound very good. But i turned the amp down a little bit and turned away from the amp and then i could hear myself and it sounded a decent deal better that i could hear myself. Is that normal?? Does that show that im not to good of a singer or is that even a problem for great singers. I dont know please help

Great guitarists and singers don't record them selves with a condenser microphone on a tape-recorder.

If you want to start recording your self and stand even a halfway decent chance of sounding reasonable, you will need to spend about 500 bucks.

I started with a Tascam 424 mk III (~300), a Sure SM58 or SM57 (~100 each) microphone, some XLR to XLR microphone cable (20-50) and a set of headphones (20-200).

You may also want to think about an Alesis Midiverb IV or something similar for a bit of reverb / echo (~200).

All of these things can be found at http://www.music123.com

yeah, but does it effect you alot when you cant hear yourself singing? Because im just trying to figure out how good my voice is on the tape player, not make any special tapes for playing all the time. I just know that when i sing and i can hear myself i sound better ( i think) than when i cant hear myself because gutiar is too loud
, the other question was, is that common for even good singers too have to hear themselves to sing good?

Well personally if I track vocals with headphones over both ears I am more likley to to be out of tune. Consiquently when I do vox I send the headphone mix into one can and leave the other ear uncovered.

yeah...it's also a matter of lots of practice.
Remember how long it took to learn to play guitar? It's kinda the same with doing vocals with a Mic..

Or, in the case of a lot of recording artists these days, just do numerous takes on a dozen tracks which are then edited together so you get the best overall performance...using de-essers, compression, reverb, autotune, and other various 'sweeteners', chorus effects, sonic maximizers, harmonics...tube pre-amps and $3000 mics...

I found I could get a good sound (someone else was singing) with my MRS-1044 digital by zoom, with just a $15 mic and a lot of eq-ing and mastering effects thrown on. So it depends on how you use the stuff you've got to.

yeah. another issue i have is that i sing and i dont sound awful but i feel i sound stupid... idk.. I always feeled that i sound kinda dumb on tape.. idk, its haunting me, ic ant tell if i am a good singer or not, my dad is a great singer and was a singer in a sothern rock band but im hoping that means i should be able to sing well also, any help suggestions?

Get voice lessons and expand the musical repertoire (don't now how to spell that eggman, sorry...) that you sing in. That way you can sing lots of different stuff, and know you sound good, if you get a good voice teacher.

Like anything else, the more you do it the better you will get !
Self confidence is a really big issue with singing, so do it as much as you can.

As far as recording goes, I dont think you need to spend much money at all. Considering you are using it to improve right now. What I use is a microphone that I can hook up to my computer. I can also put a 1/4 inch adapter thingy on it to go through my amp if i want to. The mic cost me $20. I got some recording software on ebay for 10 bucks, and it all sounds pretty good. Definately good enough to give you an idea of what you sound like. With todays technology anyone can record for very little money with quality that people would have had to spend thousands on 10-15 years ago. Its pretty cool stuff. You can even get decent recording using sound recorder which comes with computers. Good luck!!!