I was a bit overwhelmed by Ableton as well when I first started, but truth is you dont NEED to have a controller for it if you are using it for just production. I use only ableton and my mouse. Once you understand the basics of how to structure tracks you can then start branching out and learning tools one by one. There are a plethura of great tutorials on youtube (search anything by tom cosm or the tornado twins dubstep tutorial).
Also, I made the same decision and am getting a Maschine mikro for christmas which I plan to use as my drum structure for ideas and then exporting to ableton after that. I think you will be pretty happy with it as long as you dont mind clicking a mouse every now and then.
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