10 Best Free Indian Instruments VST/AU Plugins

Last updated on December 31st, 2023 at 06:33 pm

Indian instrument VSTs are quite hard to come by, especially the free ones…

This is why I put together this list of the 8 best free ones I could find.

Let’s get straight to it…

Acoustic Indian Dhol Lite by RDG Audio

Available for Windows and Mac.

Acoustic Dhol is a sample based Indian Dhol Instrument.

It has been sampled from 3 types of real Indian Leather Dhol Instruments; Wooden Dhol, Steel Dhol, and Fiber Dhol.

It is the first VST and AU plugins that can play real Indian Dhol inside any Digital Audio Workstation.

Indian, Punjabi, Bollywood, and Bhangra styles are available in Acoustic Dhol.

Over 100 articulation and 22 presets are also available.

If you are tired of playing boring Indian Dhol loops and are constantly looking for new ones, just try the Acoustic Dhol VST and AU plugins.

You can also purchase the full version, should you want to.

Related: Here’s a huge list of the best free VST plugins in the world.

Features

• Sampled from 3 types of Indian Dhols
• Over 100 different articulations
• 22 presets
• Style : Indian,Punjabi,Bollywood,Bhangra
• MPC style GUI
• Velocity sensitive
• Round Robin sampling : YES
• Attack Realease Rotary Knob
• Tune Volume Pan Rotary Knob
• Algorithmic Reverb
• Level meter

You can download it here.

Related: List of the best Sitar VST Plugins.

Indian DreamZ by DSK

Available for Windows only.

DSK is well known for creating loads of free and pretty cool-sounding plugins.

Indian Dreamz is no different…

It features a couple different typical Indian instruments which work pretty damn well!

These instruments are; Sitar, Sarod, veena, Tar, tampura & Tabla.

All in all, it’s a great plugin, absolutely give it a shot!

Features

• 6 Indian Instruments: Sitar, Sarod, veena, Tar, tampura & Tabla.
• Velocity response.
• Amp. envelope and micro-detuner.
• HP/LP Filter.
• Midi automation.

You can download it here.

Related: Here’s a list of the best free Piano VST Plugins.

Crypto Cipher Free Sample Pack

Available for Windows and Mac.

It’s a Free Tryout Pack of Indian Kontakt Instrument and wave/Rex Samples.

The pack was created out of Products available at Crypto Cipher and Some other Rare Indian Instruments.

Here’s the list of instruments;

• Double Sided Hand Drum
• ThingamaKit –SFX Instrument.
• Pambai – Rare South Indian Percussion.
• Tabla Mouth Percussion / Thunderous Raga Voice Samples.
• Mouth Shots (Tabla Mouth Percussion).
• Indian Harmonium Scripted.
• Tabla Loops.
• A patch from Voices of Ragas Vol-1.
• Sound Design Instruments.
• Violin Raga Phrases Instrument.

You can download it here.

Syntar by Syntar

Available for Windows only.

Syntar is a VST instrument designed to fulfill your every sitar sound requirement.

For best results play with droning continuous bass notes and a higher melody line.

Built in soft distortion, delay and flanger effects make it easy to tweak the Syntar to fit your style of music perfectly.

You can download it here.

If you’re looking to record quality music at home, then here’s a list of the essential home studio components which you might find useful.

Real Sitar Player by RDGAudio  

Available for Windows and Mac.

Real Sitar is a sample-based Instrument.

It has been sampled from Asian and many types of real Sitar Instruments.

Sampled with 4 Mic Position, it is velocity sensitive instrument with built in Round Robin Presets.

It comes with Win 32-64 bit VST, VST3, AU and Mac VST plugins.

Real Sitar is free but you can purchase the expansion pack for about $50.

You can download it here.

Iowa Alto

Available for Windows and Mac.

Iowa Alto Flute is a sampled alto flute from the University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios.

The sound quality is pretty impressive, especially for a free plugin…

So, give it a shot.

You can download it here.

VSCO2 Flute 

Available for Windows and Mac

Versilian Studios Chamber Orchestra 2 Flute, also known as VSCO2 Flute, is an incredible free plugin that samples a real Flute.

All of the VSCO2 plugins are fantastic and I absolutely recommend them to anyone who is in need of some free ones.

You can download it here.

SwarPlug 4

Available for Windows and Mac

SwarPlug is a VST, Audio Units and AAX plugin that will work on most DAWs.

It features an ever increasing number of instruments (over 80 so far), each with a large quantity of MIDI loops that you can audition and simply drag & drop on your tracks, to achieve something genuinely sounding in instants.

The full version sells for quite a lot, but you can download a demo version.

Features

• over 80 perfectly sampled Indian instruments
• customisable mapping of playing areas with specific parameters settings
• multi-mic fader (for ML instruments)
• MPE support
• Cross-Legato mode for seamless cross-fading pitch bendings
• scales customisation with semitone tuning
• modulations panel with large array of modulation possibilities
• time-stretching
• buses and effect
• and much more…

You can download it here.

HandPan Tribalized

While not being strictly Indian, this HandPan sample library could certainly add some flavor to your productions.

It usually sells for $35, but it’s now free for a while, so make sure to get it while you can!

You can download it here.

Virtual Harmonium by SamCycle Audio

Available for Windows

A Harmonium is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when wind is sent by foot-operated bellows through a pressure-equalizing air reservoir causes metal reeds screwed over slots in metal frames to vibrate.

This Free Harmonium VST features;

• 4 Drawbars for control of reeds including octave select
• Attack Decay Sustain Release
• 3 intuitive tone controls + reed control
• And more!

You can download it free here.

You’ll need a MIDI Controller

In order to be able to use these plugins properly, you will need some sort of MIDI Controller.

While you can use your mouse to map the MIDI in your DAW, it’s a lot faster and easier to do it with a keyboard/controller.

My recommendation here is for you to get something like the M-Audio Oxygen 25 MK IV MIDI Controller which you can find at Amazon at a very affordable price, plus it comes with some extra software like Pro Tools First.

Conclusion

It was actually hard to find good-sounding Indian VST that were actually free, but here are the ones I found.

Some of them allow you to purchase the premium version, which you could definitely do if you find yourself using them a lot.

I hope this information was useful…

Have a great day!