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...?

Do you have SONAR X2? if so Zeta+2 in great for dance melodies and basslines.  You can find alot of dance beats in the included loops in SONAR when you open up the Loop Browser.  Beatscape has alot of great beat elements in it, I don't like to use the interface for it tho, instead I locate the beatscape sample library in loop browser, bookmark it and preview the beat elements right from the browser and drag into my project.

You could get alot done in the dance genre with ZETA+2 and the included beats with SONAR. - Shawn

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.

No, I don't have X2 but as you say, I do have Reaktor. I think I will view a few YouTube movies and reviews to find out what exactly Reaktor is and can do.  I rather install ONE plugin and get to know it well then install 8 plugins and get to know none really good. 

BTW Only after posting what I posted I thought about getting Reason or FruityLoops (totally forgot about those), which afaik are geared toward dance. But then again, they all come with their own bunch of plugins so then I might as well install every plugin I've got already for Sonar... But, well, maybe it's easier to create dance tunes with for instance FL because it is more loop/pattern based...? 

Sometimes it's nice to have options, sometimes it makes live hard... 

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.

Z3Ta & rapture, tho for pure dance z3TA is probably better.  Z3TA  1 is fine and comes w/ several of the SONAR buys.  They also come w/ an assortment of other synths - check to see what you have.  Ugo Audio has some good free synths for electro - Rez 2 is as good of a mono synth as there is out there.

There are a lot of good loops in SONAR.  W/o installing more programs a lot of SONY loop CDs are good for trance/dance/electro.

Beatscape didn't really meet expectations.  The step-sequencer in SONAr is great for counting to four and repeating - much like FL Studio.  Not as instinctive as FLS or as fun, but gets the job done.

@

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,

Reaktor all the way. The sheer scope of what this synth can do is unbelievable, and you could spend half a lifetime learning it completely. If you have the full version you have access to NI's Reaktor User Library:

http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=userlibrary&L=1


In which you will find literally thousands of ensembles of all kinds to help you put together any possible kind of electronic music imaginable. Also, if you have the full version of Reaktor it comes with some fantastic "grooveboxes" with which you can put together dance grooves very quickly (and the presets are great). 

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.

Yeah, I had a look at Reaktor but it looks like some sort of DAW inside a DAW... or like '1000' synths in one. A bit too much maybe.
 
Concerning the Maxtrix: thanks for that! I COMPLETELY forgot about it! I was thinking about something like Cyclone tp put things together but the Matrix was what I had in the back of my mind! Totally forgot that one! Thanks!