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1920's music

NYC Composer

Senior Member
I need to write about 10 minutes of 1920's music tomorrow for an assignment. I have a fair amount of tools for this task (assuming vintage processing) but I would be interested in anyone's thoughts about helpful and specific libraries. Thanks.
 
Indiginus Blue Street Brass
(this has some wonderful antique microphone IRs that I wish I could apply to other libraries)

Vir2 Mojo2 also has a nice vintage setting covering the period.

Abbey Road Vintage Drummer would be a good option for period drums (although it's more about the 1930s and 40s)

Also ISW Django Gypsy Jazz Guitar (although I guess that's more 1930s as well)
 
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I need to write about 10 minutes of 1920's music tomorrow for an assignment. I have a fair amount of tools for this task (assuming vintage processing) but I would be interested in anyone's thoughts about helpful and specific libraries. Thanks.

Maybe a Louis Armstrong type ensemble? Also ragtime piano might work but it was losing popularity by the 20’s.
 
I need to write about 10 minutes of 1920's music tomorrow for an assignment. I have a fair amount of tools for this task (assuming vintage processing) but I would be interested in anyone's thoughts about helpful and specific libraries. Thanks.

Your favorite library should get a lot of play, especially the mutes and wah. Use Swing for the Eddie Lang comping unless you can do that yourself.
 
I’m more of a Freddie Green guy, but yeah I can. Is there a banjo library out there that does tremolos up the neck and comping?
 
Probably also swam clarinet, clarinet is the lead solo instrument of the day. If you need 20's guitar I play it pretty authentically.
I agree that the clarinet was the lead instrument of the day for the dominant style of 1920s music.

When I think about the kind of 1920s music played in NYC clubs, I think of:
A rhythm section, usually led by a stride piano (sometimes doubled by guitar strums), tuba bass (possibly doubled with an acoustic bass), drums, and sometimes trombone section, playing really simple repeating chord progressions with simple chords, often similar to 12 bars. In general, the clarinet improvises over this, but might trade with muted trumpet, trombone, etc. But the clarinetist was the star, so if you have a clarinet with a lot of jazz articulations, you can pull this era off.



If you can afford it, the Swing! Series has everything you need. Django Reinhardt played in the 1920s too, so you can even do jazz manouche with Swing!

If you then use EQ to roll off the high and low end, it will have that "lack of dynamic range" sound that brings back the era to us today. Blue Street Brass has old microphones that achieve this effect perfectly. There are also plugins like Izotope's free Vinyl, if you want to do something corny like add the sound of a scratchy 78.

But when a lot of people people think of the 1920s, they think dance music. They think "The Charleston" and "The Lindy Hop." I wouldn't try this with one day to do it. This is driven by rhythm and hummable melodies, heavy on drum virtuosity and lush big band arrangements. For the same reason, I also wouldn't recommend 1920s music made by Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington.

If you're trying to play anything like Armstrong or New Orleans, then you need a great jazz trumpet. There is no non-muted trumpet in the Swing! series. Maybe Swing Lite or Realitone's Screaming Trumpet or SWAM. But this kind of thing would be a stretch to pull off convincingly without live players.
 
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When I get home I'll link you some old mics impulse response + vintage chain that worked for me for strings and so
 
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