When it comes to free orchestral libraries, we are spoiled for choice. The latest on offer is the free Pocket Strings by The Crow Hill Company.
If, like me, you remember when collections like HALion String Edition Volume 1, which weighed in at a whopping 5GB (roughly), represented a significant step up from any native DAW instruments, you know to appreciate what we have for free now.
Available in AU, VST, VST3, and AAX formats for macOS (11-15) and Windows (10-11).
Pocket Strings is the result of recording some exceptional classical musicians at Clockwork Studios in Glasgow.
Pocket Strings previously cost £10, and some of you might have picked it up for free already when The Crow Hill Company offered a free £25 voucher last December.
If you didn’t, I highly recommend you grab it now.
Pocket Strings provides three essential articulations: Long, Short, and Pluck.
Like the standard Vaults interface, this GUI features two large dials, which are the foundation of your dynamic performance.
The two large dials are Timbre and Expression. The Timbre dial morphs between various recordings with varied dynamic intensity.
Beneath those dials, you have the Glass and Reverb controls.
You have multiple reverb types to choose from, including Hall, Chamber, and the Crow Hill classic Splosh.
The Glass feature is more interesting; it lets you boost or reduce the fundamentals, and at both ends of the scale, you can get fantastic sounds, whether it’s obnoxiously intense or more dreamlike.
If we think about the sound, in its purest form, it’s great musicians in a world-class studio, recorded by people who know orchestral sampling like the back of their hands; it’s outstanding.
I really like the longs for drones and emotionally ambiguous beds, but I love the velocity-controlled shorts and plucks most.
The shorts are perfect for those Zimmer-like ostinatos, and if you dig in with the plucks you’ll get that percussive Bartók snap that adds so much character.
Pocket Strings has a mixer feature that lets you morph between the original Orchestral sound, Epic Analogue, and Vintage Synth.
I love this feature for modern media composition; it’s great that you can produce hybrid sounds, but the transition from Orchestral to something far less organic can be highly impactful.
There are a couple more small but important features, the first of which is a Bass mode that adds a bass an octave below the cellos.
The second is an oscillator function with selectable waves moving underneath your sound, fluctuating Timbre/Expression to provide more organic dynamics, rather than a static sound, without the need to perform it with faders.
Pocket Strings was a steal at £10; it’s quite ridiculous as a freebie, but it’s free, and I love it.
Last Updated on July 31, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
