It's pretty easy to get the grid idea, but when you start trying to do anything more complicated Ableton turns out to be a mess, with many limitations and arbitrary weirdnesses.
E.g. you can't send MIDI sysex out of Live (except to the Push 2 controller). That kills it for all kinds of hardware automation and advanced synth programming.
Live has no concept of a mono track, so it wastes a lot of DSP resources processing effects and mixes in stereo for no reason.
There's no simple hybrid clip arranger mode, which is something most other DAWs can do.
MIDI clip files come with an audio preview. The clips aren't associated with any drum sounds. So you hear the preview, think "I like that...", load it, and then you have to spend half an hour picking the right drum sounds for it.
And so on. I've really tried to like working with Live, but there are just too many design decisions that make no sense for it be to anything other than frustrating.
I started in that mode (since I tend to do long drones) but once I adjusted to the non-linear workflow it became super easy. It helps that the ecosystem around Ableton is so rich now.
E.g. you can't send MIDI sysex out of Live (except to the Push 2 controller). That kills it for all kinds of hardware automation and advanced synth programming.
Live has no concept of a mono track, so it wastes a lot of DSP resources processing effects and mixes in stereo for no reason.
There's no simple hybrid clip arranger mode, which is something most other DAWs can do.
MIDI clip files come with an audio preview. The clips aren't associated with any drum sounds. So you hear the preview, think "I like that...", load it, and then you have to spend half an hour picking the right drum sounds for it.
And so on. I've really tried to like working with Live, but there are just too many design decisions that make no sense for it be to anything other than frustrating.