So here's the scenario: I play drums and mallets (marimba, vibes, etc.) and currently own a drumkit and a 4.3 octave padouk marimba. However, I'm looking into buying a Pearl MalletSTATION. The versatility of it is very attractive, being able to play all those percussion instruments on this one thing. I'm also quite interesting in jamming by building up some layers/loops; such as playing a bass marimba line, drums, chords on vibe and finally play solos on xylophone for example. On the other hand, I regularly help out small town orchestras with their melodic percussion and they usually don't have the right instruments (vibes, tubular bells etc.) so hooking the malletstation up to a PA would be very useful.
For context: I'm a software developer by profession. I use linux (ubuntu) or otherwise Windows if necessary for better software. MIDI is not an entirely strange concept to me, but DAWs mostly are (used cubase years ago but it looked like a maze to me). I read that Mainstage is good at this, but it's not for windows/linux and that ableton live can do this, but I'm not sure if it's overcomplicated. And to get mallet samples I need the suite version of the software voor €599...
So the question is: what is the most straightforward setup for me that I can use to play the malletstation at home but also bring to performances?
Edit:
a clearer overview of what I basically want to do, preferably as many of these as possible through programmable buttons on the midi-controllers:
- plug midi-controller into laptop
- choose an instrument
- hit record
- play some notes
- hit stop so it starts looping those measures
- change instrument
- hit record again etc. (or play without recording)
