How Anvaya uses Kontakt to bring South Asian instruments into club music

On Sands Between Us, which was recently released with Indo Warhouse, Anvaya brings in elements from their South Asian heritage without forcing anything. Some tracks lean into classical melodic frameworks, others use percussion textures like tabla or khol to shape the groove. It’s not about referencing culture as much as it is just part of how they work. If a tanpura drone fits the mix, they’ll use it. If a shehnai is played with the right tension, it stays. Everything is there because it makes sense for the track.

Kontakt plays a big role in the process.

It provides them with access to a wide range of South Asian instruments, allowing them to move quickly when shaping ideas. They’ll often use it to sketch grooves, bounce them to audio, and resample as needed, pitching parts, stretching textures, or pulling out single hits to build new sections. They’re not trying to keep everything pristine.

The goal is to make something that works in a club and holds up on repeat listens.

In this interview, Anvaya explains how they use tools like Kontakt to bring culturally rooted sounds into their workflow, how they stay open to unexpected ideas, and what helps them move fast without over-processing the mix.

Jump to these sections:

• How Anvaya build tracks using South Asian instruments and phrasing
• How cultural influences shape Anvaya’s sound
• Why Kontakt helps speed up their process without losing flexibility
• Tips for resampling and reshaping traditional sounds
• What helps them commit to audio early and avoid over-editing
• Advice for using culturally-rooted instruments in club music

Their approach is practical, fast, and built around feel – not theory. If you’ve been looking for ways to blend traditional instrumentation into modern production without slowing down your workflow, this one’s worth a close read.

Try their techniques in the Kontakt Player, a part of the free Komplete Start bundle with professional-grade instruments, samples, sounds, and more.

Get Komplete Start free

When you’re starting a new track, what usually signals that it needs something rooted in your heritage?

Pretty much anything we write pulls from influences in our heritage in some form. For some songs, it’s in the percussion groove, in others it’s in the melodic framework (called ‘ragas’ in classical Indian music), other times it’s in the vocals, and sometimes it’s in all of these elements.

Often times, the tracks we write pull elements selectively, for instance, using a shehnai for melody or santoor for counter melody as we did on our Sands Between Us EP, but there have also been records we wrote with the intention to infuse all of these elements to create a love letter to our heritage, such as our tracks for the Garba Szn II EP.

Pro tip from Anvaya: In an age where in-the-box VSTs give you near complete control over sounds, there can be an over-abundance of choice and feeling like you want to keep something as MIDI to tinker with later in the production or mixing process. But progress happens more quickly when you remove those variables and commit to audio. Sometimes we’ll keep the midi track in a subgroup of muted layers to go back to later if really needed but we find that 95% of the time we aren’t going back to that layer once we print from MIDI to audio.

Do you think about representing culture sonically – or do those influences show up more instinctively?

Generally it feels natural to draw on Indian or South Asian elements when writing music. It can be in a textural, percussive or motific way. For instance a tanpura is used frequently in classical Indian music to create a drone over which soloists perform – so when we need a drone-type element, we may pull in a tanpura and resample or process it in a way that feels fresh and new.

Or when we need tonal percussion, we’ll pull in a khol or mridangam or tabla and pitch shift as needed. There are South Asian equivalents for almost any type of sound, so part of our process is to figure out how to use those elements in new and interesting ways in our production.

In addition to the actual sound selection, arrangement influences also come into play. For instance, we used the concept of ‘Jugalbandi’, which is a type of duet in Indian classical music where soloists trade complementary phases back and forth to create musical dialogue.

We incorporated this structure between vocals and violin to create mounting tension in the song “Take My Hand” off our Sands Between Us EP.

What makes Kontakt a good fit for the kind of hybrid production you’re doing?

What’s so ideal about Kontakt is that the libraries give you significant creative control over so many aspects of the sound while retaining the original structure.

For instance, when using dholak percussive rhythms in Kontakt, you can select a specific type of dholak rhythm which is rooted in classical Indian training; but you can modify the swing, groove, accents and ghost notes to make it fit perfectly within the production as needed.

This is true for melodic instruments as well as percussive elements. A lot of our drum programming starts with creating grooves in Kontakt, bouncing, then resampling as needed.

Native Instruments also has some great Spotlight Collections featuring Indian and Middle East libraries which are really useful. Short of finding live instrumentalists to work with, this is the closest thing to having control over the melody and rhythm of South Asian instruments while retaining the authentic playing style.

Pro tip from Anvaya: Be cognizant of whether you’re searching vs. finding. This concept is found in Hermann Hesse’s book “Siddhartha.” There is a difference between searching (having a specific goal and being fixated on achieving it) versus finding (being free from goals, open to new ideas or experiments).

Are you doing a lot of resampling and audio processing once you’ve found a part you like in Kontakt?

Oh, all the time.

We love taking sounds and warping them in all sorts of interesting ways. For instance, we may resample instruments like harmonium or sitar with grain delay, reverb and time stretching to create swelling pads. Another thing we do is pitch-shift percussion to create all sorts of interesting transients or bass sounds.

One of the things that we’ve previously struggled with is when to commit to a sound and all the variables you’ve selected and dialed in. Over time, we’ve become more comfortable committing early and bouncing to audio.

That step is key because once you have printed to audio, you can do so much more with it in terms of resampling, reversing, taming transients, isolating specific hits for accentuation, and so much more.

Pro tip from Anvaya: Remove the effects when starting with presets. There are many great presets available, but we find that they’re designed to create a “wow” effect when cycling through them. This is usually through effects, mainly reverb and delay. However, if you’re using multiple layers and synths, this can quickly lead to a muddy mix.

How do you keep Kontakt elements from sounding “stock” or too recognizable?

We feel like there’s a lot to utilize within even a few libraries. Once you dial in specific rhythm or performance elements within Kontakt, you can resample and process and we feel like the possibilities are pretty endless. Subtle changes add up over time and you can make it feel completely different with just a little processing like pitch shifting specific hits or adding effects.

Something we’re cognizant of when writing is that these samples are not ‘written’ for your track in the way a live instrumentalist might fit their performance to your song structure. So what’s important in using elements in Kontakt is knowing how to adjust the parameters to create a performance that fits your production well.

Pro tip from Anvaya: Many percussive elements are tonal and getting the pitches right can create ‘alignment’ in a mix. Regarding mid-to-high percussive elements (especially within South Asian sounds), many of these are tonal.  Sometimes, pitch shifting your tabla or ride cymbal by a semi-tone or two can create a sense of ‘alignment’ within elements of the mix, which is really that there is harmonic coherence.

For someone trying to use culturally rooted instruments in club tracks – what would you tell them to focus on first?

Songwriting and arrangement are the cornerstones for a strong track.

Using culturally rooted elements for their own sake isn’t particularly impactful, but incorporating them to accentuate a strong melody, counter melody, or groove can be substantial. We think the question to ask is “what’s interesting about this element and how can I emphasize that?” and then building around that.

For instance, tabla is a highly tonal percussive instrument, so you can create groove and melody synchronously.

Start creating music with Kontakt

Thanks to Anvaya for laying out a process that’s focused and adaptable. They’re not romanticizing traditional instruments or trying to make a point about identity through sound design. The goal is simple – use the tools that work, process them in ways that serve the track, and stay open enough to let unexpected ideas shape the outcome.

Whether they’re building grooves from Kontakt libraries or cutting drones into pads, nothing feels locked in too early.

But they’re also not afraid to commit when the sound is right.

That balance between structure and spontaneity is what gives the Sands Between Us EP its shape – and what keeps their process moving forward.

Use Kontakt free