Question regarding best way to record on UI24R

Dingo34

Hi All,
My first post here. Bought the Soundcraft UI24R recently and as part of using it, I am hoping to record a song I wrote recently.

I have had some experience using software based home recording (Cubase) quite some time ago but this was nearly 10 years ago.

I have had a fiddle with it so far and was able to record using the 2 track USB recording, so I managed to get this far. But due to my lack of any experience using this product, what I was doing was not really what it was designed for; i.e. I recorded a guitar, and then played that back and whilst playing it back hit record and then recorded the bass (obviously because I needed to hear the guitar)..I then played that audio back (guitar and bass) and hit record and recorded vocals, and so on repeating this cycle until I had an audio file which included all the instruments on it. It was OK (I was in fact quite impressed by the sound quality), but obviously doing it in this fashion gives me no control over mixing and effects levels for each instrument for a final mix.

I have gone through the manual but it does not seem to address the questions I have (and please forgive me if it does), but what I would like to know is, is there a better way to do this using the 2 track USB method, or should I look to use the multi-track method, and do I need to employ a DAW? Is there any manuals which goes into more details on this subject, or videos or something of this sort?

Many thanks
Dingo