Thank you, for helping me on my first post down there. I started playing with Ableton Live, connected to a simple midi keyboard (no knob controllers). I used two of the factory loops, and then added some of my own material. It was difficult, and I was a bit clumsy, but I put this house-ish track together:

http://www.matt-j.net/music/crap/First_Time.mp3

There were keys linked up to control band passes and queue the cymbal, as well as change the clapping track.