Simple Slate

Hi everyone,
I'm in crash course mode here, learning all about another aspect of music I have barely delved into. As a singer/songwriter, this aspect has rarely come up. In the studio, my bands always had live drummers. Now I'd like to add drums to my solo material and am short 1 live drummer. My solution-loops, waves, and samples.
There are many programs out there which work with these formats extremely well. One of the main ones is Fruity Loops. Perhaps I am generalizing, but this one seems very popular among techo artists. I have had analogue artists express their great joy over Fruity Loops. Since I have never personally used this program, I'm not going to attempt to be an expert here. Those of you who have used Fruity Loops, feel free to fill in the big blank . I have personally opted to pull out my old Acid and Soundforge programs. The format is more familiar, editing is a sinch, and pasting is mindless. You can manipulate wave file to your heart's desire.
I think that it will never replace a live drummer, but you can get pretty close with the quality of .wav files that are available today. The downside, don't expect too much good free stuff out there. Often free loops, samples, and waves are offered at a lower quality than if you were to purchase them. You can find nice compilations in your genre for decent prices.
If you are new to this as I am, then go find some free stuff to play around with. You can try piecing individual sound fonts together, but more preferable is to find a section of a file you like and either copy it into the desired .wav file length, or loop it. Then simply arrange all of your individual sections into your desired song arrangement.
Ok, I made this sound really simple. It is more time intensive than I thought it would be originally. I suppose after you have done it for a while, you get into a groove of quick drum pattern making.
Happy looping
Dae