Of course it's up to you, but if I were you I would just get a controller and just get started. It's never been easier, cheaper or better. If you want to save money you could just get something secondhand from ebay.

I am invested in and love Ableton but there are lots of good options out there.

Like I say, I don't think hardware is necessary these days. It is fun to have dedicated knobs for everything but if you get a good controller it's much more flexible overall.

I can put 10 instruments into a single instrument rack on a track in Ableton and immediately have 8 macro knobs to control whatever I want about all 10 instruments at once.

You can easily do crazy stuff like create mutant instruments that morph between completely different instruments or samples, and change effect settings according to how hard you play the notes, or what part of the bar you're in. The limit is really only your imagination!

Then if you want, you can just duplicate that whole complex track with a single keypress. It's crazy. You can't do that with hardware!

Getting it to sound musical is the hard part, and that's where hardware shines - because you're limited in options, you can usually just turn it on and get a good sound out if it immediately. But IMO that's not a real reason that hardware is better because of course you could limit yourself to that in software too.

You sound like you can afford it and have the desire. I would just buy something and get started. It's heaps of fun, as long as you don't put too much pressure on yourself!

This is basically my plan. Except that I'm deliberately putting it on hold until I'm done with the book I'm writing because I really don't have the time and definitely don't need the distraction.

> It's heaps of fun, as long as you don't put too much pressure on yourself!

But putting pressure on myself is like my #1 personality trait. :)