[quote name='Tait' post='555538' date='Jul 29 2009, 08:22 PM']i use reaper, that does basically the same job as audacity and garageband doesn't it?[/quote]
yeh.
I would say the next step is to get some decent mics, which means a decent pre-amp or two, and then probably a decent audio interface. This is because working with mics and acoustic recording is far more difficult than recording DIs.
I was in the same position as you when I was 16. In retrospect, I should have gone to college and done a Btech in recording.