Welcome to the forum!
Asking any technical questions it is important to include your system specs in the post. Otherwise it's really hard
to start guessing answers. Put them in your signature like most here have done.
The first step towards problem free DAW-hobbying would be getting yourself a decent audio interface that supports ASIO driver. The integrated soundchips usually don't cut the cake. You can get quite usable ones for around 100-150$.
Trying to get something done with the mobo chip, that I assume you're using, check in the Options (or maybe it's called Preferences in MC5) what driver is selected. Mobo chips usually use MME driver as default, which is the poorest there is. If there is the option to use WDM, try that. If that doesn't work, download and install the free ASIO4ALL driver (which is not real ASIO). That has helped many.
Changes in the speed of recording are usually caused by sample rate mismatch. I don't know anything about those guitar-to-USB-chords, but I assume it's made for 44,1 kHz sample rate. Check that your project is set to the same.
Be patient :o)