The slow part. It generally takes me about a week's worth of doodling and trying out various sequences in Cakewalk before I get something I like. Once I get the basic motifs in the song down, though, the rest comes together pretty quickly, and then I can start thinking about adding lyrics.
All composing is done directly into Cakewalk.
I use no outboard keyboards of any kind. Recording the final composition is usually done through Sound Forge . I just fire up Forge and Cakewalk, load the composition into Cakewalk, hit record on Forge, press play on Cakewalk, and let it roll. It's all totally touch-free. When composing, I often try to add loops using ReBirth or Granulab , but I don't always prefer to have them playing back in sync with the main score.