Westwood Instruments has released Tempest Brass, the fourth installment in their Roots series of free Kontakt Player libraries.
Tempest Brass is built from a collection of solo brass samples that have been time-stretched and overdriven into something you wouldn’t normally expect from a brass library.
I love how they did it, honestly, and I think it’s perfect for modern cinematic scoring. They added just the right amount of processing to add interest while still preserving the core brass sound.
I’ve had a soft spot for the Roots series from the start. The previous entries have all carried a unique character: Dust Piano had a slightly lo-fi feel, Drifting Winds has some wonderful pitch-bending woodwinds, and Untold Strings is just beautifully melancholic.
Tempest Brass keeps that pattern going. It’s not really a library for traditional orchestral composition, but it works so well for modern cinematic scoring, trailer work, and sci-fi cues.
I tried it this morning and loved it. It’s super playable. Load a preset, add a bit of reverb, and you’re already in blockbuster sound territory. It delivers low, brooding brass tones that you hear in an epic modern scene or a sci-fi build-up.
The instrument really does most of the sound design work for you, and all that’s left is to find the right notes.
The interface is Westwood’s usual minimal style, with controls for the envelope, a sub layer, reverb amount, and a handful of additional effects. Nothing overwhelming, but enough to dial the sound in the direction you want.
Tempest Brass ships with five presets, which is pretty decent for a focused library like this. If you haven’t picked up the other Roots releases, I’d grab what’s still available (Dust Piano and Drifting Winds are the other two currently on the store; Issue 1, Untold Strings, is listed as sold out).
Each one is a complete little instrument on its own.
To get it, you complete a free checkout with your name, email, and address on the Westwood site, and they send a serial key. You then enter that into Native Access and download it directly. Unlike Westwood’s paid libraries, the Roots series doesn’t go through Pulse Downloader, which is a nice touch.
If you’re looking for more free orchestral tools to build a cinematic template around, I recently updated the BPB roundup of the best free orchestral VST plugins, which covers 17 libraries worth installing in 2026.
Tempest Brass runs in Kontakt Player (or Kontakt Full) 8.9 or above, on macOS 14+ (Intel i5 or higher, including M1 and M2) and Windows 10/11.
Download: Westwood Instruments Tempest Brass (FREE)
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Last Updated on April 29, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
