Question regarding a first interactive project

first of all, hi.
I'm new, my name is thomas, i'm from rotterdam and i has questions.

Now to the serious part, i'm planning on learning max/msp in the future and due to the lack of knowledge about the program I have a question.
I'm planning to make an interactive multitouch instrument wich has the following components.

Movable dots, wich will send midi info wich depends on how high they are in the screen. The higher the position, the higher the pitch.

A + and - button, wich will increase or decrease the amount of dots, wich then can be moved in to postition (hopefully from a safe area, where they will not be triggered during playing the instrument)

And finally, an expaning ring or circle wich will start expanding once the player touches an area outside of the dots. When this ring touches a dot, the dot will send its midi data to ableton, triggering an instrument I made.

The interface design will be rather simple, all white, and hopefully some visual feedback from the dot (expanding size, or changing to a certain color, depending on the note it sends)

The main question i have is: will the interface design part be hard within max/msp/jitter?
Do i need difficult formula's to make the ring expand and do the collision detection?

I'm looking into actionscript or max/msp to realise this project.

so: wich one of the two will do the job best? (with the least amount of work so i can move on to making a freeform drum sequencer as well)

Thanks for all the help in advance, and please post all the info you have, projects that you think of that might offer usefull insights etc.