Which should I get first?
I’m really gonna try to make a long story short
I’ll be getting Ableton Live 9 Standard and plan to be purchasing both the Maschine Mk2 and the Novation Launchkeys 49
My question to you is which should I buy first? The Maschine or the Launchkeys?
Also I dont have any prior piano skills. Should I get the 49 key or a 25 key midi keyboard?
You might as well buy Ableton Push if you’re gonna be using Live. Does everything Maschine can do and is built to work with Ableton.
And you can play it like a keyboard!
Yeah - get Push.
What do you want to do? The thing with Midi is it can be mapped to do anything. You can play drums on the keyboard and I’m sure somehow you can play a keyboard or specific notes on a maschine. It depends on what you want and feel is more neccescary for you at the moment.
I would also get push.
+1 for getting Push. Looks awesome, think I might get Live Suite & Push. Relatively cheap as well for what you get.
I would just get ableton and try learning it for a couple years.. haha
Getting annoyed with people saying go and buy a controller to produce.
I don’t think it takes 2+ years to learn to use Ableton or to justify buying a controller. That would be 1/9 of the OP’s entire life. That seems very silly.
personally I wouldn’t get push if you’re just buying Ableton at the moment..
DEFINITELY get some hours, days, weeks, months of practice in before buying a production CONTROLLER (push).. you need to know the fundamentals of the program first, and I can’t even imaging trying to learn ableton through a controller opposed to via laptop/computer first!
get a no-frills 25 key midi keyboard for sketching out ideas, don’t bother going for an expensive keyboard just yet until you have a better grasp of the program and producing.. trust me, I was pulling my hair out looking for a keyboard of varying sizes, with all the bells and whistles, mappable rotaries and slider etc, until I finally realised - why do I need all of these things, I have a mouse.
now I just practice with my Ableton Live Suite (which I purchased recently out of my own pocket [sorry, but I’m proud I haven’t pirated, being a 19 year old poor university student]) and a Korg Microkey 32, which isn’t even necessary, just helpful in jamming out melodies and basslines before writing them in.
just my two cents.
Since you don’t have keyboard skills, you should get Maschine first.
op is only living until 18? You seem very silly.
I tend to agree with what most people are saying, if you buy a full fledged music production controller like Push or Maschine, you’ll likely be overwhelmed in the beginning and your workflow will go nowhere. If you’re considering controllerism at all to begin with I’d recommend a nice inexpensive mini like the Akai MPK Mini or the Korg Microkey as they do a lot and it’s not a big commitment.
kbridge is right. You will piss yourself off with frustration trying to figure out how to get all that gear to work. I would reccomend a MIDI keyboard with 49 keys the most and a few assignable knobs, maybe even a few pads on it. Akai has some good ones that work well especially for abelton. Its not about what gear you have it about what you can do with what you dont have.
Eventually when you r comfortable with Abelton you will feel out what you could implement in your studio.
With gear lust, no matter what anyone suggests, or advises you, you will end up buying it anyway.
I myself, have spent money on lovely flashy things, which when I have used them, have realised it was overkill.
What my suggestion is, is a hybrid of the previous posts:
This can be done through anyway you want/can afford or have time for. For instance Youtube is a great resource, as is http://www.abletonlivedj.com/forum/ you can also subscribe to trainer videos, or even pay a local cert trainer to help you.
Once you have a grasp on the software, you will have a clearer idea of what you need, hardware wise
*Buy a cheap midi keyboard
Be it a NanoKey, or an oxygen 8, or some cheap £10 job in PC world, it’ll help you get an idea of both the feel of playing a softsynth, and an idea of how ableton works with controllers. It’ll also double as an inexpensive midi controller. Learn to map the keys to various functions in Ableton, and understand what you need to be controlled via hardware, and what you are happy with controlling via your mouse- if you aren’t performing live, then you may find that a lot of work is actually done via the mouse, and the hardware becomes a dust collector.
I see you mention th Mashine- great kit, great company, used by lot’s of the big names, but as someone just starting out, do you want to have to learn the DAW (and let’s be honest Ableton can have a steep learing curve), and the Mashine, and all the routing that goes with it? Do you have the time to actually give the hardware and software the time needed to become profecient? can you afford to spend time learing about numerous pieces of equipment, or would a better use of your time be to learn one piece, inside and out?
Maybe what you want the Mashine to do, can be done on another, cheaper piece of kit? if it’s just drum pads you want, there’s other, cheaper, just as revered pieces of hardware that can povide that specific task for you (mpk-16,lpd-8, midi fighter just off the top of my head). They can have a drum rack and some one shots/hits thrown onto the relevant pad, and voila you have your drum machine!
If it’s the samples or presets you are wanting from Mashine, then why not get Komplete, or if that’s more than needed, try a site like loopmasters etc, so you can pick up drum beats, perc hits and the like.
Again with the keyboard, until you are sure that’s what you need, you can use something cheap until; you are ready to mve on.
Two pronged this one:
As I said, gearlust is a very difficult thing to shake off, and as you are likely to end up going against the advice of others and getting something anyway, get the thing you think will give you the most fun
and the second part to that is: If you spend a load of cash, on something that doesn’t give you a thrill, or a smile, or some kind of ‘emotive’ connection when you use it, you probably won’t be either satisfied, or be wanting to learn it’s ins and outs. Conversly if you choose something as lovely and tactile as the MAshine, you will most likely spend lot’s of time using it, and ultimately learning it.
These are just my thoughts. At the end of the day you have already made your mind up, and just need the right answer to give your subconcious the permission to ‘do it’, so whatever you end up doing, enjoy it. and if you don’t then you can always sell it he on the forum 
Well guys it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted this so I figured I’d let everyone know whats been going on. The past two months of the summer I’ve been traveling a lot for music festivals and have started simply saving up money for what I want to do. I plan to buy Ableton Live 9 Suite and use it on my current laptop for the time being and am gonna focus on learning the DAW before purchasing any hardware whatsoever since I have no idea what would help my workflow nor do I have any previous piano skills to merit even buying a keyboard for the time being, after I learn the ropes then perhaps I’ll know what things I’ll need but in the meantime I’ll just be buying good monitors for production purposes as well as a soundcard.
Ableton PUSH DOES NOT do anywhere near what Maschine can do! Push is in it’s infancy! I say go w/ Maschine.
How do u make sense? A drum machine(Maschine) and a complete controller that controls ableton completely, including impulse. So its maschine plus more.. ?
Cause everyone has lots of samples n vsts!
Obviously you have never used either.