I remember being on tour with the DUBS and we were playing a show with The Dixie Dregs in Philly. After our set, I was walking though the club, and this guy approaches me with this amazed look on his face. He says to me “How did you do that up there?” I’m thinking maybe he dug the show, or liked my drumming or something. I asked him what he meant, and he says “How could you play up there before Rod Morgenstein???”. I understood after that as he was obviously a huge fan of Morgenstein’s playing. I replied something like “We just did our thing up there…. It’s not a competition or anything”.
The Dixie Dregs were nice people, and extremely talented. I remember Steve Morse playing the theme to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE during a soundcheck and it was stunning.
The best composition prgoarm I have come across that enables you to prgoarm instruments via MIDI and loop custom drum beats is FL Studio. I use the producer edition, but that may be a bit out of most people’s price range if you can get around that somehow, go for it.