Don't laugh. I need advice on dance music...

Ok, this is not really my cup of tea, but I need to make some dance music. A bit of a house trance dance whatever stuff... I have no idea what plugins I should use for this. I was hoping there is ONE plugin that would do it all (beats but also bass and melodies) but plugins seem to be either meant for making beats or for making melodies/bass/sounds. I seem to remember seeing people creating entire dance tunes with one plugin but I may be wrong.
 
Now my problem is that I like to keep my PC clean. I don't want to install all kinds of plugins, try them out, only to discover it's not what I thought it was and having to uninstall it all, leaving stuff all over my PC...
 
So what I'd like to know is: what plugins that come with Sonar and Komplete 8 (not 9) are the best to make dance music?
 
For instance: is CW's Beatscape similar to NI's Battery or not? Or are they totally different? Can you make entire dance tunes with them or are the really only meant for beats? Or should I use CW's Cylcone instead? Do I need NI's synths like Massive or Reaktor or Absynth? Do I need one or all? Can I make complete tunes (that sound great) with only one? (I don't even really know what the difference is between them all...)
 
In short: could someone give me the shortest possible list of plugins with which I should start my journey into dance world?
 
Or should I go all out and get Maschine 2...?

I co-sign with shawn. Z3ta+(2) is probably your best bet if you were seriously trying to use one plugin for every sound as far as cakewalk's included plugins. Then again, you have Komplete, so Reaktor may be an even better choice since you could literally have access to drum, synth and sampler modules within same plugin. With that said, most tracks use more than one plugin. If you have Komplete and Sonar, you have more than enough to create most dance music tracks without installing a thing. The beatsape samples are good but the program is garbage and utterly useless (no insult intended..but i think Cakewalk agrees and thus blog videos focusing on the samples rather than the program). The minimum setup you will need depends on just which genre/sub-genre you are trying to create.

NI's Massive is very EDM orientated. You could do a lot with massive for synth sounds and Battery for the drums. If you are going down that route Komplete would be the best value option.

But Cakewalk's Z3tA and Rapture have a xillion EDM orientated presets. (I would rate Z3ta +2 above Massive.)

For "beatz" (oh, how I hate that term ), as Shawn says there is a lot of content in Cakewalk, just drag it from the browswer, I never used beatscape and I have not read too many good things about it. Session Drummer 3 has some electronic kits if you want to program your own patterns rather than relying on canned loops.

All of the synths mentioned have great capabilities for the sounds themselves. In addition to that I would recomend taking advantage of the Matrix in Sonar for arranging your loops and instruments.

It also very easy to drag into the Matrix from the Browser.

Regards,

Although I gave an answer that said You could literally use Reaktor alone, I would not recommend going that route. Reaktor is a sound nerd's dream but it is far from the most intuitive tool in the shed. The time you spent creating a sampler module in reaktor with a workflow that fit your needs may be just as easily accomplished just using Kontakt. Although Reaktor is technically one plug in, the workflow will still be like using more than one.

Regarding Reaktor: I have literally gotten lost inside that thing - in a good way. We're talking looking up and seeing that the sun is about to come up lost. Not sure if that is productive or not but it sure can get some juices flowing.

Regards,

Hm, I gave the Matrix view a try but that didn't work out too well...

If you have never used MV before I would recommend checking out the X2 videos available. Groove 3 has an excellent one by Eli Kratzenberg (iirc) and of course FastBikerBoy (a forum member) has his from SWA. FBB may have something on his YouTube page also.


I've found the Matrix to be quite robust in usage although it did take a while for it to sink in. YMMV of course but it seems to me that any tool you pick, if you have not used it before, is going to require a learning curve.


Regards,

By Jove I think he's got it!

I had a listen to the first song you created, and replied to it in the other thread.
I guess I was a bit thrown that you did a chilled, ambient piece.  When I saw you were interested in trance, house, etc, I was going to recommend you the harder hitting synths like Massive, Razor, etc. 
 
But as I forget sometimes ambient/chilled is a form of EDM (Electronic Dance Music).
 
So, if you're going to continue down that road, check out Absynth, it has a lot of pads and more 'etheral' sounds.
Also, don't forget Kontakt, especially the orchestral strings.  You can always creatively use a filter to help brighter patches 'fit' more into a chilled mix.
 
I also just remembered you can use reverb and large delays, especially Ping-Pong delays (works great on vocals and drums).

Thanks for the tip about Absynth, forkol! And sorry for putting you on the wrong track about the style...  When I posted what I did I didn't yet know what all those styles were. Now I more or less do.


And thanks for the compliment, mmorgan!

bigboi


If u want to spend the loot, Maschine does it all.  Leads, loops, beats, bass, fx,....eveeything. works as a plug inside sonar. Maschine micro is pretty awesome

Oh yeah, I've been looking at it. Looks awesome. But the loot's a problem... And besides, what they do NOT show in all those pretty demo video's is how much time it took to load all the right sounds, to prepare the Maschine and (last but not least) how much practice it costs to play that thing live as some of those demo guys do...!!!
 
When I created my first dance tunes I had the idea I spend more time finding the right sounds than making music.
 
Anyway, the Maschine is on my list of things to have... it's just that I don't have a clue yet if I will be making a lot of dance music... It would be a shame to buy it for 6 or so demo tunes on the internet... (If you knew how much money I spend on THE plugins that would be PERFECT for me but that ended up getting uninstalled after a project or two... Ouch...)

Hey nice track, very well done. I think you would like the music of Four Tet and Boards of Canada, they're masters of that laid back, melodic style of EDM. 

I'm toying with the idea of buying Maschine. Whether the full version or the Mikro version I don't know. I don't think it's just for finger drummers, although I know a lot of those demo videos showcase that side of it (and some of those guys are insanely talented). The reason I'm interested in it is that it just seems like a better way of arranging electronic pieces, in particular the drums. I haven't been happy with Sonar's beat making capabilities when it comes to EDM. I mean it's OK, but it just seems like that other DAW's and plugs have way more useful features in this respect, for example the ability to apply grooves and swing to patterns in real time, non destructively. I can get things done in Sonar but the workflow is quite slow and tedious at times. Other packages (including Maschine) seem at more geared toward encouraging creativity when it comes to electro music. 

I'm actually thinking Maschine could be very useful for other forms of music too...the drum pads are way better than on most synth controllers, and I've heard a lot of people say that they love that they can get an entire tune framework pegged out on Maschine alone, without even having to turn on their DAW. I'd love to be able to do all of my arranging on Maschine's sequencer and then mix it in Sonar. 

Plus, there is a Maschine iPhone app that allows you to create beat ideas on the go and load them into Maschine later. I love that idea. 

I found out the hard way, after getting the Kore 2 hardware controller and using it maybe 5 times total, that you can not force hardware use into your workflow if you simply are not into audio hardware. Sure, those knobs feel really great, but to me, they are no more than a hassle. I work quicker and with more precision with my mouse and keyboard, and found no real added benefits to being able to twist multiple knobs at once. I'd probably feel the same about Maschine. There is already a great step sequencer in sonar and hitting the drum pads on my midi keyboard for getting ideas down is more than sufficient. You have to really know you can get into these kind of things or it can become a superficial layer that just gets in the way. Just something to consider.

Hello mate.

I listened to your piece, very nice with great sound and good atmosphere. 

I make a range of EDM & Electronica, and Sonar 8.5 is perfect for that!  I'm not sure what PE is but I use Producer and to upgrade isn't that much if you watchout for the special offers that come. 

People often think that they need Apple's Logic or Cubase to make great dance music as when you see EDM prodcuers giving a demo like Armin van Buuren or Mike Koglin, etc, they're always using Logic but you only need to look at the blog of Ilan Bluestone who's at the top of his game ATM to see that he uses Sonar 8.5 Pro!!! 

Also, people like Jaytech (Prog House) use Ableton, Daniel Kandi uses Reason, Adam Szabo uses FL Studio and some use Cubase (can't remember who but I did read a number of producers who did).  The poor relation has always been Sonar but as I've already said, Bluestone has proved it's just as capable.  Personally, from people I know who use Logic, they seem to experience more bugs and crashes than anyone else - must be Apple's insistence on using AUs instead of a tried and tested VST format but on that basis, I think it's overpriced and over rated as someone has yet to explain to me what's so good about it!!! 

I'm mainly a hardware guy as you'll see from my list but I do use some VSTs and have tried quite a few.  Apart from NI's Massive, you'll find one of the most used synths in EDM is Sylenth and there's good reason for that.  It sounds like an analogue synth, it looks like an analogue synth and is really straight forward to use.  I don't like a lot of synth VSTs as I think their interface is confusing, not intuitive and too complex and on that basis, I'm fussy what I use.  Hell, some of them look like they have an interface like a spaceship and if I have to spend an age learning a unique interface, I'm off elsewhere frankly. 

Other VSTs worth noting are Spectrasonics Omnisphere, Rob Papen's VSTs (both used by Armin v B) and one which was used quite a lot during the early to mid 00s, Novation's V-Station which some may say is a bit old now but fact is this little beauty produced all those lovely Supersaw like Trance sounds during that period and still contains most of the elements that a modern VST has.  I have both, the A-Station which is hardware and the V-Station.  It's available for a small sum of money now but often gets overlooked (snobbery maybe?) but a very capable fat sounding synth as it has a double-saw feature which you can enable on all three oscillators and then stick unison on.  I think it achieves a very close sounding JP supersaw, closer than most other VSTs can do which is a staple Trance sound.

To hear exactly what I'm taking about, check this soundset out, as the demo was done entirely on a V-Station only:
http://www.adamszabo.com/v-station-soundset/ 

One cool thing Sonar can do without resorting to using a CPU hogging plugin is that ducking effect that most producers use and abuse now by using a sidechain compressor whereas Sonar has the Sonitus Gate which even has a preset setting ready to produce that effect with minimal CPU overhead and no artefacts or colouration of sound that you often get with a compressor! 

I can't speak about loops or samples as I personally don't use them as I always create my own drums, even if I hear a loop I like, as I was brought up in the days of the Roland TRs so I've got efficient at tapping rhythms in and quantising on the fly as well as using the step sequencer if I need.  However, don't forget the Session Drummer as I use that a lot especially for sampling my old drum machines and bringing into Sonar so that I can get the flexibility of the DAW so I often sample drum sounds I've created in my real studio into a wav file and then into Session drummer. 

That's a few of the useful features that I can think of for now to help you with EDM so I hope that helps. 

Don't forget to look at the free VSTs thread as there are some cracking freebies around. 

Cheers.

dubdisciple


Sharke...the gotcha with getting maschine versus the mikro version is many of the upgrade discounts offered to Maschine users are not offered to Mikro users. I'm not a big fan of beatmaking using strictly Sonar tools either. Yes, it can be done, but it's just not intuitive. The sequencer for maschine is not all that either. It's the controller and the sample library that comes with it that people crave. i even know a couple of people who use the Machine controller with geist software since the filters are superior.

I looked into Geist but it looks like it's a real pain to work with anything but 4/4 time. I've read people discussing workarounds that sound awkward but at the end of the day you just think come on, this is a VST drum machine that costs over $200, you should be able to work in whatever signatures you want.