Which software for me?

I am looking for software suggestions which will help me primarily with songwriting and to provide quality accompaniment for jamming/improvisation. I have been using Guitar Pro for years and it meets nearly all my requirements but what it doesn't have is an easy way to generate patterns for drum/bass (which must be written from scratch just like the guitar tabs).

I've spent hours fruitlessly downloading demos, installing then uninstalling when I become frustrated with the interface or realise the program doesn't meet my needs or stretches my patience. Lately I've tried the following:

FruityLoops (FL Studio 7)... I found this unintuitive to use/learn, and with little support for a 'rock' musician such as myself. Marketed mainly at the 'dance' production area.

Finale Songwriter... Looks good on paper, but Guitar Pro handles many of the same processes much better, IMO. Because of this I never got past the tabbing stage to see what the playback sounds were like.

Myriad Harmony Assistant... Same as Songwriter. Frustrated by the tab editor so never really got any further with it.

Band-In-A-Box... Found it almost impossible to locate any songs in the demo version representing the rock genre. Couldn't turn off the cheesy piano melody voice and got frustrated and left.

Unfortunately, as I rapidly approach middle-age I find it difficult to tolerate spending long periods in front of the PC at a stretch (it makes me dizzy) and I become impatient if I can't find what I want fairly quickly. Having spent some considerable time learning to use Guitar Pro I'm not too keen to have to relearn how to do all the same things with another program unless it's the last time I need to do it. After all, I want to write music not become a button-pusher.

Ideally, I'd like a similar program to Guitar Pro which is also geared to the recordist/lone musician as I need to create backing parts without the assistance of other musicians. However I also want to be able to start using it within minutes of installation, not spending days reading a manual first.

Can anyone steer this old fart in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.

Tracktion 3. 99 dollars for the project bundle, and when I got it, I was making keeper tracks within the first 15 minutes....

But I don't think Tracktion has any song/MIDI generation stuff, does it?

I use Band in a Box for working out songs, and practice which I find it great for, but I don't generally play rock, per se, leaning more toward roots, blues, and post-modern genre-bending, although I've had ok luck finding basic, old skool rock stuff when I've needed it... never really looked for modern rock/emo/grindcore/etc stuff in it. I do have a "mega-pack" from a few years back (all their then-current styles). And there's a lot of stuff in there.

As you've found out, things come out of the tube pretty "Casio Demo" until you tweak them around, finding good voicings and turning off what you don't need (which, for me, is often plenty. BTW -- you turn off a given "instrument" by right clicking on its text button at the top of the page... you'll see it "dim" when you do.)

I also tend to simplify drum rolls in it, as they lean toward round the kit rolls. Which is just a little too retro often enough.

You can also mix up styles in a given song, now (I used to put them together in my DAW software) and you can mix and match parts from different styles.

But it's not for everyone, to be sure.

But, yeah, it may not be the best choice for rockers... of course, any time you computer generated parts in rock you're dancing on the rim of the volcano...

Try downloading the demo of jamstix from www.rayzoon.com. It is a drums VSTI which can produce decent rock rhythms. Select "Free Jam", click start in your host, and start jamming.

If jamstix works for you, I believe they also have a program called jambassist (which I have not tried).