Do I need to know Assembly to mess with these trackers?
no (not with HivelyTracker at least)
Can I record my stuff into an audio file and then convert it to a sid?
no
HivelyTracker isn't SID tracker, it's just a tracker for format that can generate SID-like sounds.
The original C64 music (SID modules) were created manually programming your own replay routine (and often a simple editor, too). This indeed required programming skills. These days there are "trackers" for SIDs too, but still it's much harder work than using some higher level tracker app that allows you to produce something that just sounds "SIDish". I hope this makes any sense...
The question is: do you really want to create genuine SID tracks (as in C64), or just music that sounds like SID? If you want to do real C64 stuff then HivelyTracker won't do.
