Skip to main content

Browse music by historical eras2 min read



We’re always working on improving and diversifying the ways that you can browse and search for music here at Shockwave-Sound.com, and this week we’ve added the possibility to browse for retro music by decade.

By clicking on Suggested Production Types you can see a panel similar to the one shown here on the left. You will see various “Historical / Retro:” selections including:

1980’s: The era of the electro pop and a continuation of the “later era Disco” that was started in the 70’s. Also, soul (Motown) and AOR Rock music was prominent in this era.

1970’s: The era of Motown, Disco and Funk, when pants had flares and the Bee Gees ruled Boogie Town.

1960’s: The era of peace and love, free love and free sex, when hippies set the musical order and pop & rock music took on Beatles’esque sounds and psychedelic colors. Also prominent in this era was the Bossa Nova and smooth latin chill-out music.

1950’s: When Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and Bill Haley & the Comets ruled the world. This was the era of the Rockabilly, along with classic Jazz sounds

1920-1940’s: This was the era of happy jazz music, Dixieland and Charleston, but also Gospel, Blues and early Hollywood type orchestral film music.

Older / History Channel etc: This is where you’ll find music that we felt would be suitable for general Historical programmes, historical documentaries, world history / heritage and so on. Much of this music is pretty “ambient” in that it would work well simply as background music to storytelling, documentary film etc.

Remember that you can Combine one of the above selections with other criteria, by using the Advanced Browse feature. For example, you can choose to browse music from the 1970’s which is also marked with having a “Happy” mood. Or, you can choose to browse music from the 1920-40’s which feature a trumpet. There are many, many such possibilities available to you from within our Advanced Browsing tool, which you can read more about here.

Bjorn Lynne

Bjørn Lynne is a Norwegian sound engineer and music composer, now living and working in Stavern, Norway. He was also known as a tracker music composer under the name "Dr. Awesome" in the demoscene in the 1980s and 1990s when he released tunes in MOD format and made music for Amiga games.