Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4/5 Stars
New from Crow Hill Company is a fun little instrument titled Pocket Strings. At a bargain price of £$10 and placing only very modest demands on system resources, the idea here is to provide a portable string instrument which packs a creative punch, both as an excellent sketching tool and a colourful addition to existing libraries.
The clear and attractive GUI provides several immediate sound‑sculpting options, allowing users to quickly morph between traditional cinematic‑style strings and full‑on string‑synth textures with a surprisingly large amount of real‑time modulation and timbral undulation at one’s fingertips.
Looking from left to right on the interface, one first notices two interlocking wheels. The larger of the two wheels is a Timbre dial, allowing the user to crossfade between different recordings of the ensemble playing the same articulation. The inner circle is a standard mod‑wheel‑driven expression control. Played together this allows the composer to achieve an impressive amount of dynamic expression.
Beneath the wheels we see Glass and Chamber settings. The latter allows for the selection of several different reverb options, from closer‑sounding ‘chamber’ settings, to a nice hall, and a wonderfully cinematic ‘Splosh’ preset. The innovative Glass setting allows composers to deal with the frequency peaking that can occur when many samples are layered. Turning up the Glass dial applies compression and control to the fundamental frequencies, boosting or reducing them as necessary, while also giving users another fun morphing tool. After this is a digital‑sounding, but still rich, Glisten setting, which creates a fast echo with a latent shimmer.
Moving right on the interface, three buttons allow users to immediately switch between long, short and plucked version of their sound. The shorts are punchy and clear and seem to have a round robin selection occurring, while the nice plucks also sneak in a healthy Bartók pizz with a high‑velocity input.
Creative Power
The instrument’s real creative power comes in the central mixer, which allows users to morph in real time between the traditional chamber string recording, to the classic Solina string emulator (bottom left, marked as ‘Vintage Synth’), and finally to the Yamaha CS‑80 (marked as ‘Epic Analogue’). Crossfading between these three in sustained passages or in more punchy short driven lines is a real joy.
On the bottom right is a Bass switch, which simply doubles each note with a bass player an octave beneath it (as high as the bass will go, or C4). Beneath that are three large ‘shape’ buttons, which apply gradual dynamic changes across a duration of one to four bars. Used in combination with the expression and timbre wheels, dynamically nuanced performances are possible. My only requests would be to maybe include a few more shape types, and to fix the GUI, which currently requires users to click directly onto the shape graphic while the box around it remains inactive.
Ably fulfils its role as a small sketching tool and an intriguing addition to your existing string palette.
For only £$10, this is a compact yet powerful little instrument which packs a lot of fun under the hood. It’s a pretty little thing with surprising depth, and ably fulfils its role as a small sketching tool and an intriguing addition to your existing string palette.