I definitely recommend the keyboard, even without a strong keyboard playing skill, it will make note creation much easier for you. The LPD8 will make a lot of your work easier, and it’s a very decent price, so it won’t hurt, just is not absolutely necessary.
Yeah, Massive is just a VST instrument, a very good one – it will take some time to learn how to make your own good patches with it, but it will be time well spent, and the built in sounds will also keep you happy to start with.
Ableton is one DAW that would support Massive, yeah… the list of DAWs is very very long. I personally use Ableton, but I’ve got my eye on Bitwig as a possible change in the future.
Fruity Loops is also really popular, as is Logic Pro if you’re on a Mac. If you’re an old school computer music geek that’s made MODs or other tracker like formats, there’s also Renoise, although I would only recommend it if you really want a tracker interface, as it is rather fiddly for doing things if you are not already familiar with that workflow – it’s not worth the trouble if you don’t already know it, as you can get the same results from a lot of other DAWs.
