Best software and/or approaches to arrange drum breaks/hits and to perform Ethnic drums solos

[mcsardus]

Hi,

In first place, sorry for asking about two possibly different things at the same time.
I am just trying to figure out if there is any plugin which would allow both things, so to save money and learning time.
My DAW is Reaper and I currently have BFD3 and am trialling Mdrummer from Melda, which I am attracted to because of the good north African percussions included in the price, and Jamstix (the free version).
I am trying to find the best solution to do the following two different things (not at the same time obviously):

1) Arrange drum grooves under songs I sketch and record on guitar or piano (pop and rock stuff). I see that both Mdrummer and BDF3 allow to fire different grooves via a controller, so I could just do so while my recording play to arrange different sections. However, there are breaks (moments when the drums stop entirely) and "hits" (accents on specific moments of the song) I would like to add the same way. This way I would create a rough outline of what I am going for, and then build from that.
2) Improvising on my keyboard controller solos of darbuka and other expressive percussions, so with good flexibility about dynamics and tones. I do not have any drum pads controller or similar, and I would like to use a weighted keyboard (or borrow a small seaboard from my wife) and perhaps an expression pedal (and the various sustain pedals on my keyboard).

Is this something which can be done with what I have?

Sorry if it is not a very clever question.
I normally play and record acoustic music.
My only experience with point one is from many years ago, with Band in a box. Band in a Box works very much like a band would organize things. There are sections with chord progressions decided beforehand, and also hits and rests at certain points, when only some instruments will play. As for the rest the single musicians do their own thing (indeed I remember using ready made styles, only taking care of the chords ,sections and hits/breaks).
I wonder what is the easiest way to do the same with what I am using now, and if I should get Mdrummer (I like the ethnic drums on their free packs).

Thanks for any advice!

[DJ Warmonger]

Get a drum pad?



From something very basic to standalone workstation. Also, you may get a keyboard that already has one.

[Maltinski]

interesting approach ... for the drumpads I can highly suggest the old (almost vintage) Korg padKONTROL in silver/white ..buying used you will have a great deal !