Playback Start and Stop in OS X menu bar to enable remote control by shortcut

Would it be possible to add playback Start and Stop to the native OS X menu bar? I would hope this wouldn't take that much effort and then I would be able to assign a system wide shortcut to these functions and start/stop play from within my DAW. 

Right now I'm using an AppleScript linked to a shortcut using FastScripts. I needed to build in some delays for it to function properly: it switches focus to Synfire, sends out <space> to start playback and switches back to Reaper. Rather slow/messy and I would love to use the native OS X shortcut functionality to control playback in Synfire.

An optional loop mode that sends out the Start Playback and Song Position message to the Rewire Drone again after every loop, would also be very nice, even if it wouldn't be seemless looping, but maybe a bit too much trouble.

Thanks for reading this. :)

Reaper is working great with Synfire by the way! (Trying a switch from Cubase 8.)

AppleScript:

tell application "Synfire Pro"
activate
tell application "System Events"
delay 0.5
key code 49

delay 0.5
end tell
end tell

tell application "REAPER64"
activate
end tell