Traditional Northern Indian instruments like sitar, harmonium, and tabla can be difficult to recreate uccesfully as a multisample instrument. That didn't stop Native Instruments from trying, and we're glad it didn't. Native Instruments NORTH INDIA KORE SOUNDPACK, designed for the Kore 2 multisample engine, presents a number of North Indian classical instruments in very smartly laid-out keymaps. Oh, and they sound pretty amazing.

Native Instruments uses split keyboard functions to create some very playable and realistic-sounding performances from the instruments in NORTH INDIA. For example, the tabla patch organizes single hits, phrases and loop-able grooves in different keyboard splits, making it easy to improvise amazingly complex classical tabla patterns with ease.

The below video, produced by NI and presented by NORTH INDIA creator Nicki Marinic, is a good example of the clever mapping, as well as the sound quality of this KORE SOUNDPACK:

Instruments in the 3GB collection include bansuri, harmonium, shehnai, sitar, tabla, tanpura, and synthesized drones and modern Indian pop instrument styles. NORTH INDIA is the first in NI's new "Discovery Series" fo KORE SOUNDPACKS, and is available from the NI Online Shop for $79 US.