Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music
Soundbreaking explores the history of recorded music. Featuring more than 150 original interviews, the series charts a century's worth of innovation and experimentation, and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the birth of brand new sounds.
Genre: Documentary, History, Music
Cast:Dermot Mulroney , Todd Boyd , Questlove , Don Was , Jeff Beck , Jason King , Roger Waters , Oliver Wang , Darryl McDaniels , Jody Rosen , Annie Lennox , Adam Horovitz , George Martin , Chuck Granata , Roger Daltrey , Greg Milner , St. Vincent , Fredara Hadley
S1.E1 ∙ The Art of Recording
Looks at how the record producer realizes an artist's vision and captures it for posterity. Explores the styles of some of the biggest producers in the business including Sam Phillips, George Martin, Phil Spector, Dr. Dre, and Rick Rubin.
S1.E2 ∙ Painting with Sound
Explores how the recording studio itself became an instrument. From the advent of magnetic tape, charts the evolution of multi-track recording and reveals how artists with ingenuity and imagination transformed the sound of popular music.
S1.E3 ∙ The Human Instrument
The vocal track is one of the most fundamental parts of a song but it can be the most challenging to capture, both technically and to get the emotional quality of the music. This explores the art and science of recording the human voice.
S1.E4 ∙ Going Electric
Tells the story of how electricity has been harnessed and channeled to create new and never-before-heard sounds, tracing both the chain reaction unleashed by the invention of the electric guitar and the evolution of synthesized music.
S1.E5 ∙ Four on the Floor
If vocals are the heart of a song, the rhythm track, the beat, is its body; the element that hits a primal part of us and makes us move. This show looks at rhythm in music, breaks the beat down and examines the endless experimentation.
S1.E6 ∙ The World Is Yours
This show looks at how the technique of sampling, using bits of recorded sound or borrowing fragments from existing records, created a new genre of music and sparked a musical revolution.
S1.E7 ∙ Sound and Vision
Chronicles how the music industry was overhauled when MTV forged an inextricable link between recorded music and music videos. Tracks the music video from MTV to the Internet and illuminates the music video's role in popular music today.
S1.E8 ∙ I Am My Music
Vinyl record, cassette tape, CD, and MP3; each generation has had its own type of music media. The format used for listening determines how and where we listen, as well as the manner in which we collect, store, and share the music we love.
