I went ahead and ordered an Akai Pro LPK25. I thought I could get away with learning the basics without a midi controller for now, but there's no sense in not having one. should be here in a week.

i had the lpk 25,its a great starter controler.
it is a controler,let me explain the difference.
a keyboard is something that has sounds built in to it.
a controler looks just like a keyboard but it has no sounds,it uses sonars sounds,like demention pro,cakewalk sound center,rapture,zt3a,understand ?  :)

i know whats happening right now your saying holy cow,more money?..lol.
and you went with the cheapest controler you could find..i dont blame you,
your walking in the same foot steps as i did,get a feel forit them upgrade :)
my next purchase after the lpk was a m audio oxygen 49.
it has full size keys and more importantly,it has knobs and sliders,which control the faders and pan knobs in sonar.
your lpk doesnt,but thats okay,it was a wise choice for right now.

let me get back to you later when i have more time,for now check out this video i made on setting up session drummer 3 for midi.its for using a drum machine but it still shows basic set up techniques.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjZS61Wg-XY
then theres this one which is how i write drum parts in the Piano roll view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruAnAPR6-hQ

these tutorials might help you out a bit to understand basic/advanced triggering methods.
by the way when you get you lpk 25,set it up just as i show you in this video,only replace the drum machine example,for the lpk.

enjoy and congrads on the keyboard purchase.

Charlie Roy

great. thank you for the insight! I will check out the videos this evening. sharing your gear experience is really helpful, I'm glad to know I'm heading in the right direction and will make note of your recommendations when I'm ready to progress. I've been eyeing an alesis sr-16 for a while as another means of creating drum tracks. from what I know of it, it has been around for years but many old-school musicians say it's great, what do you think (haven't had cause to demo ie until now, but I've heard tracks that it has been used in)? It's going to be a long week waiting for the controller to arrive!

if you have a keyboard you can do a lot as well.
but to be honest once you master the prv tools.
you write drum parts by hand fast as lightning.

check out the vid on editing in the prv,it will get you going in the right direction.

i hope everything is working out for you man.

talk to you later  :)

the keyboard arrived this morning (several days early). I will be hooking things together sometime in the next couple of days. so I may be bugging you again, soon. ha. 

btw I didn't even realize that one of the tutorial vids in your sig, you are using the sr 16. 

Soo... I finally had a minute to sit down with the LPK25... plugged it in, installed everything, but suddenly I am getting no sound with the cakewalk vs software. The meter rises and falls whenever I play with the drum soft synth but there is no actual sound coming in through the headphones...:-/ 

I tried the options in the troubleshooting guide but I didn't get very far. :-/

did you turn on input echo ?

this is the one everyone forgets.

also go through your I/O's man  :)

inputs outputs.

make sure your device is indeed selected in preferences/midi.
then make sure your input is AKAI LPK
your output:the synth you loaded.

install the driver too. but don't mess around with that software,just install it.
also try a few different synths,use the octave buttons as well you could be out of range of some synths