Reply to Starting Up

I originally released a tune back in 93, and since then most of my friends have gone on to be involved in music either by djing or studio engineers, a very good mate of mine has his own studio and is happy for me to go in and visit and him to give me a crash course in cubase and to knock out some tunes together, now my question is this.

I was looking at Maschine would this allow me to make music with a stand alone software or should i look at something else starting out?

as I said this is going to be for me to learn and potentially make tunes with but I will no doubt end up doing most of my work with a friend when we have time to meet up.