So I'm new to this. I'm trying to add a drum track. A custom track that I play with the mouse. So I bring up the Sl-Drum Kit 4 and proceed to bang away at the bass drum, snare and the occasional cymbal. With track armed, record on, I can't seem to get a recording. I see the peak, but no recording. I hear the drum no problem there. I can add a preconfigured drum beat no problem either. Problem is I want a custom beat. Simple, but custom. Can this be done or do I need some special midi drum pad or something?

I just want to make sure I understand your question. Are you trying to play drum track live with a mouse and record the performance?

Great. I lost my reply. Here goes again. While adding the SI-Drum Kit to a track, in the properties there is a drum kit. Clicking on the snare produces a nice snare beat. Is there anyway to record some beats by clicking with the mouse? It would be easier if I had a real live mouse and a real live drum kit for him. Alas, I don't lol.

So yeah. I wanna play the kit live (virtually) with mouse clicks and have it recorded. Is this possible or is the response by clicking just for sample purposes? To hear what the kit sounds like?

The pads on most drum synths like SI-Drums are intended for previewing the sounds; they are not intended to be used to interactively record a drum track. If you want to capture a real time drum session you will need a MIDI input device like a keyboard or drum pads. You can directly enter a drum sequence with either the step sequencer or the piano roll view. There are a couple of videos on this page http://www.cakewalk.com/C...NARU.aspx/Master-Class that that might give you some ideas.

  Thank you, and apologies for my newbness. I just kinda figured that out while searching around for the answer. Thank you for putting it so succinctly. I will be borrowing my daughters midi keyboard.

No problem, this is the place to ask questions. SONAR comes with a bunch of MIDI drum loops that can get you started building drum tracks fast. You can audition them using them using the browser and SI-Drums or Session Drummer 3 (if you have it) and drag them into the project. You can also "play" the patterns using the pattern pads in SI-Drums or SD3. Here is a youtube clip introducing the SI-Drum synth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UquKaN5Ruio

do you have a drum machine?
you can also use a drum machne to trigger the drums in studio drums and in session drummer.

look in my signiture for the video on how to hook it up.
its easy.

A good way to lay down your own beat is to record a scratch vocal and guitar part played to the metronome. You need a solid midi tempo set before recording the drums otherwise you'll have a pretty gooey mess. 
This is for traditional rock, blues or country, electronic music is different approach.

I layer my parts using either a midi keyboard or a digital drum set ( way better). 
I might run through and just record the kick and snare first. 
Then another pass for the hi hats/ ride and cymbals and possibly the tom fills.Then remove snare hits that would be unrealistic with crash or tom fills. If you play a little bit of drums it helps and the results are way more natural sounding than spending hours sticking loops together. 

I might use a simple pattern instead of the metronome to get things rolling. 

Heres an idea if you want to do custom stuff but dont have any type of pads or keys.

I dont see what you have access to or interface,
but if you have a mic or anything that will record to an audio track,

--set it up to record you beating on a desk or any hard surface that a mic will pick up, (maybe even thumping on a guitar.
--once you have recorded that, bring up audio snap by selecting the track and hitting the "A" key
--you can select the "Copy as MIDI" and paste that onto an "Inserted" Session Drummer track or any other Synth track you wish.
--Then assign all those notes to what ever drum component you want

In the end its just about getting what you are feeling converted over to a music tone 


It would help if you could post your system in your signate-Computer and interface with specs, etc...

Let us know what ya think