11 episodes

A familiar sound from the past is like a time machine – it can take you right back – just for a flash of a second to a moment in your past. But can we get the same powerful sense of time travel further back in time? Can we travel to other people’s pasts through sound? In this podcast series we meet the researchers uncovering the lost sounds of the past and discover that all sorts of long ago sound is recorded… If you know where to look.
Each week Abigail Wincott interviews the people who do know where to look, researchers who piece together long ago sounds, from prehistoric South India through the Renaissance school room to life as a slave in the American South.
All of these projects to reconstruct the sounds of the past can tell us something important about real people’s experiences, and they can also tell us about ourselves and our world today. Insights that we often miss when we look but don’t listen.

Past Sounds Abigail Wincott

    • History
    • 5.0 • 1 Rating

A familiar sound from the past is like a time machine – it can take you right back – just for a flash of a second to a moment in your past. But can we get the same powerful sense of time travel further back in time? Can we travel to other people’s pasts through sound? In this podcast series we meet the researchers uncovering the lost sounds of the past and discover that all sorts of long ago sound is recorded… If you know where to look.
Each week Abigail Wincott interviews the people who do know where to look, researchers who piece together long ago sounds, from prehistoric South India through the Renaissance school room to life as a slave in the American South.
All of these projects to reconstruct the sounds of the past can tell us something important about real people’s experiences, and they can also tell us about ourselves and our world today. Insights that we often miss when we look but don’t listen.

    Songs birds used to sing with Dr Ross Crates

    Songs birds used to sing with Dr Ross Crates

    Regent honeyeaters are losing their rich and complex song culture as their population declines and fragments. Dr Ross Crates and colleagues are using old recordings of the songs that have since been lost, not only to understand the decline, but to teach young birds to sing their intricate songs of their ancestors. More information can be found on the series webpage https://abigailwincott.wordpress.com/past-sounds-podcast-2/

    • 24 min
    17th century sound effects with Dr Laura Wright

    17th century sound effects with Dr Laura Wright

    What we call sound effects - from trumpets to explosions to mermaids - were central to theatre of the 16th and 17th centuries. Laura Wright tries to uncover what the effects were, what they meant and what it was like to experience them. More information on the podcast can be found on the series webpage https://abigailwincott.wordpress.com/past-sounds-podcast-2/

    • 18 min
    Vintage Radio Drama with Dr Neil Verma

    Vintage Radio Drama with Dr Neil Verma

    Neil has listened to thousands of hours of US radio plays from the so-called Golden Age and found a rich world of symbolism and spatial realism created by some of the time's greatest writers, directors and actors. More information on the episode can be found on the series webpage https://abigailwincott.wordpress.com/past-sounds-podcast-2/

    • 26 min
    Baroque Improvisation with Nina Kumin

    Baroque Improvisation with Nina Kumin

    It's hard to imagine Western classical music as improvised and participatory, but that's what Nina Kumin tries to bring back to life as she researches the sounds of Baroque music through playing. More information on the Nina's work can be found on the series webpage https://abigailwincott.wordpress.com/past-sounds-podcast-2/

    • 26 min
    Sonic Histories of Cork City with Elaine Harrington and John Hough

    Sonic Histories of Cork City with Elaine Harrington and John Hough

    As Cork’s historic docks close, tourists snap photos of the last ships coming in and share them on social media. But who will snap the sounds of the docklands? Elaine and John race to collect disappearing sounds, and recreate those already lost. More information can be found on the website https://abigailwincott.wordpress.com/past-sounds-podcast-2/

    • 23 min
    Stone age tastes with Dr Riitta Rainio

    Stone age tastes with Dr Riitta Rainio

    Musical tastes affect the places we listen to music in, and those places also change the music we perform – from chamber music to stadium rock. Sound archaeologist Dr Riitta Rainio talks about the acoustic tastes of the Finnish stone age. Read more and share your suggestions for future Past Sounds at the website https://abigailwincott.wordpress.com/past-sounds-podcast-2/

    • 23 min

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