[wildzzz]

It might be easier than that. Are the bass lines totally missing or are they just very weak? If you can capture a recording using vintage equipment and the placing of it, you can get the system response. Run the original recordings through an inversion of the response and you should get really close. Another possible method is to find the transform between an identical modern recording of the song and use the difference between the two recordings to make your transform.

[thangalin]

Some examples:

The Mooche

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPJ5vNmVL3I (The Duke, 1928)

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLdCq2PKM4o (John Barry, 1984)

Sugar Foot Stomp

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEdIWVsfPXs (Henderson, 1925)

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35foefTrdLo (Nighthawks, 1993)

Doctor Jazz

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTYAaX7lqjQ (Morton, 1926)

* https://www.shazam.com/song/1687138286/doctor-jazz (Asaro & Fat Babies, 2016)

I was wondering if anyone was working on this (i.e., using pure software). Period equipment, real musicians, and such would be time consuming, arduous, and cost prohibitive.

[seanhunter]

Neither. You can hear them if you listen carefully, just the recording tech plus lack of amplification makes it harder than modern music.[1]

Source: have degree and postgrad in jazz and used to be a bass player. Have made transcriptions of early bass players from original recordings. (by ear without any kind of fancy tech)

[1] and the playing technique for various reasons.

[embedding-shape]

> Are the bass lines totally missing or are they just very weak?

I think it might be that it's missing a large part of the lower frequencies, not that entire bass sound is missing. And I guess it'd be hard to faith-fully regenerate those, if we simply don't have a lot of samples.

[codedokode]

The problem might be more complicated. In those times, they might not use a separate mic for every instrument (and the mics probably were not great), they might might not do the mastering properly, the amps could distort the sound, and instruments could overlap each other. And if you try to simply amplify lower frequencies, you might end up getting too much noise.