MIDI Beats ... Your Take

so elderly country folks with weak hearts should avoid those midi drum loops, eh? lol.

 i find the process of building drums both boring but challenging, i use the step sequencer 2 with session drummer or steven slate drums or drum masters in kontakt, and write in the beats by hand, it's good to come up with things which are realistic but complex and not too repetitive. don't like it when people just use one or 2 loops for the whole song. not sure my beats move earth, wind or fire tho...

I've used pre-made midi grooves only once or twice.  besides those exceptions, I always create my own beats by hand.  If have nothing against them, and if I were making more loop based music I'd probably use them a lot more.  I'm currently writing and creating music in a "rock band" format.  In a typical rock band there would be a drummer making up the beats by hand.  This is what I'm emulating at the moment. 

These are most excellent thoughts, Slugbaby, Guitartrek, Chinchen, and MGH,
I'll focus more on advantages for now.  (Sorry you blessed old-timer purists.  You always have my utmost respect and honor if you prefer to make your own grooves from scratch.)

More Hypothetical Advantages of Dropping Beats:

1) One should not re-invent a musical phrase just to discover, *subconsciously*, one sounds exactly like a groove-meister from song x or song y.  IOWs, many 4/4 groove samples I've toyed with seem nearly identical, except for timbre.  Everyone's groove seems not utterly unique.

2) The beats that you/I purchased allow some/many of us a fuller expression, anyway.  These demo every percussive imaginable; something we song-writers crave.

3) A song-writer producer has a right to honor his palette, his instruments, his beats, his collab-helpers to express the song.  All is vanity ... and much learning is wearisome to the flesh.

4) While excellent grooves can be spun-up in 10 minutes to an hour or 2; I need to know how others are doing it.  I can then, ponder it, enrich it, and/or learn to assimilate it.

5) Judiciously 'dropping' secondary grooves (shakers, clackers, tambs, frogs, claps, etc. etc.) on top of pre-existing rock grooves oft redeems a turd-mix (for me).

6) Pre-fab grooves make for an excellent ambience and/or pad-element to toy with.

7) Discoid dance grooves are quickly 'discovered'

8) There are incremental rises and falls within grooves, square/sine waves, and instrument-hits ... for you and I to spicen up our expression.

First, I don't care about the cheating aspect... if I was in a regular band, I wouldn't be writing the drum parts.

AS far as loops, it depends what you mean... there are programmed loops (which sound like loops), and there is MIDI which was recorded by pro drummers playing vDrums (e.g. GrooveMonkey, OddGrooves, etc.). The latter can sound pretty authentic in the hands of a savvy user.

I'd prefer to have a real drummer (which sometimes I do), but from a practical standpoint, pre-made grooves often sound more realistic than grooves clicked into the piano roll in Sonar IMO.