Help A Newbie

Hi guys.  First post.

I'm  an audio engineer and long time VB, C#, JS guy with nearly no C++ experience.   I'm slowly going about the process of porting a standalone drum sequencer app to VST3 with JUCE and VS2013 and could use your help.  Thanks in advance.

JUCE has made it easier than I thought to get to where I am so far so... thanks for that.

I'm taking this in stages, baby steps as it were.   The first thing I need to do (empty plugin running ok) is to send a simple midi message from the plugin UI by clicking a button.   After I get a full grasp on how midi messages are sent, I'll deal with locking my plugins timing to the host and all that and sending notes from a grid later.  For now all I want to do is send (for example) a C1 note from clicking this button.

I'm using Reaper for my testing because it launches so fast I can get in and out of building the plugin without waiting so long to test it.