discount music equipmentWhat kind of recording equipment do I need to record a song?

I want to get into the music production program at UCO. To do that, I have to create and record 3 songs. What kind of equipment do I need? What brands are the best? I work at Best Buy so I would prefer to get stuff from there with my employee discount. I just have no idea where to start. Is Pro Tools 10 a good program? Is it hard to use? Thanks for the help.
If money is no object, Pro Tools is a good product, but it's way overkill for a first-time recording project, if that's what is expected.

Unlessdiscount music equipment you're going for low signal-to-noise ratios like a professional recording studio, you should be able to do with an internal sound card and a freeware program like Audacity. If you need to record multiple channels, as you might if the musicians are all in one place and playing together (as opposed to single-tracking the entire production), then you might consider a small mixer to feed the sound card, or if you want to spend a little more, something like a FirePod external digitizer, which has multiple inputs discount music equipmentand mixing capabilities.

Just keep in mind that the more equipment and software you use, the more things can go wrong and confound your efforts. My son uses some fairly sophisticated hardware and software in his recording studio, and it works very well... NOW... but that was after many days of troubleshooting driver problems, hardware and software problems to get it to that point. Not the kind of thing you'd want to be dealing with when an assignment is due in a couple of days.