Cakewalk comes with session drummer. You have a choice of how you want to write your drum patterns. Of course if you don't (or can't) write your own drums there are plenty of loops that come with session drummer
which you can drag in to a midi track and edit to your liking.
You can use the piano roll or the step sequencer. Session drummer is good for what it is but depending on how much control you want there are far better ones out there.
What you want to use may depend on what kind of music you make, are organic realistic acoustic drums what you're looking for or are you looking for old style drum machine sounds like a Roland TR- 909 ?
Third party drums you may want to check out are...
Fxpansions
BFD Eco and
BFD2 Topontracks,
EZdrummer and
Superior Drummer XLN Adio's
Addictive drums These may be a little more than you need right now unless you want to dive straight in to the deep end. The more realism and control you want then obviously the bigger the learning curve but in my case it has been very liberating.
If I were to recommend one it would be BFD2 without a doubt and it's currently on sale for the same price as you would pay for EZdrummer which is very light in comparison.
All of the third party options come with a large library of midi loops. BFD2 also has it's own built in drum editor.
Steve
post edited by twaddle - 2013/01/20 18:38:49