Beginner

A good place to start for deep/funky house is ableton’s electric plugin for all those electric pianos. It’s based on the engine of an old plugin called Lounge Lizard and it’s the bomb.

Try analog for your leads and basslines. Also the drum plugins (drum rack and impulse) in ableton kick ass. But drum rack is by far the better one.

For effects … well all of the included ones are good for what they are and all of them are useful for all kinds of music. I fear you’ll have to provide some more information on what you need for more info there.

These will help you get started as they are all "in the box" instruments which means they are included with live. In live you can also use "VST" plugins. A good place to start with those will be here :
http://www.gersic.com/plugins/index.php?daCat=-6
All plugins in that site are [color color=blue:yxvcigqb]FREE[/color:yxvcigqb].

As for controllers go for a 3-4 octave keyboard with some knobs and sliders. I’ll give you the links to 3 different keyboards of different prices and you can go on from there

CHEAP (around $120-150)
M-Audio Oxygen 49 – http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Oxygen49.html

MID-Price (around $270-330)
Novation Remote SL-37 – http://www.novationmusic.com/products/r … l?option=1

EXPENSIVE (around $700-800)
Studio Logic Fatar VMK-161 Plus – http://www.studiologic.net/VMK-161Plus.html

Hope this helps.

EDIT- I just noticed that you are a DJ. My bad . The above i think is good advice for beginning producers so I’ll leave it as it is. But i guess you want to use ableton for DJing and not production so there goes some dj oriented advice as well. For FX you’ll definitely feel right at home with the EQ Three – Feels as if it was pulled from a mixer’s eq section plus it has great kill switches. Also give Beat repeat a go , it has the potential to blow your mind during a set but it can also ruin your mix if used irresponsibly. The flanger might also be useful to u since you play house so give it a go.

As for dj controllers google Faderfox. They make controllers specifically for ableton live and i know for a fact that they have one for djs.

Peace.

There’s always sampling too, for the sounds you can’t get with any amount of digital work.

fl studio is the better