[Digi9000000]

I usually start with a click track in Pro Tools, which I create by hand from a closed-hi-hat sample... at the desired tempo. What a pain! Then I play guitar with it until I come up with an idea, record some basic guitar loops. I bounce these loops to a folder for the song in my FruityLoops folder (FruityLoops is a killer little "tracker" program, basically a sampler/drum-machine type tool, look it up on the web).

In FruityLoops I create drum tracks, synth lines, and assorted in-tempo noises from a bunch of samples I have. (Sometimes I go to Reason for this; although it's easier to create drum tracks in Reason, it sucks for exporting.) Then I bounce each 4-bar or 8-bar loop to the desktop, launch Pro Tools, and import the loops into PT. I always copy the media into the session's audio files folder... I usually need to do this anyway since Fruity is 16-bit and my sessions are usually 24-bit. Then I mix and arrange, and if I need to I can always go back to Fruity for touchups. The files I store on my desktop are usually trashed as soon as I've imported them, since it's simple and quick to recreate them from Fruity.

What I love about Fruity, besides its killer sample-manipulation features and integrated synths, is that when it exports a 4-bar loop, it doesn't cut off the end of the sample (for instance, a snare-drum decay at the end of a loop). Reason does cut off samples, and you need to be really careful to select a section a little longer than the loop for exporting.