Watch Soundbreaking, PBS’ 8‑Part Documentary Exploring the History of Recorded Music (Free for a Limited Time)

Update: After mak­ing the videos avail­able for a cou­ple of weeks, PBS has now tak­en them down. If you’re real­ly inter­est­ed in watch­ing Sound­break­ing, you can pur­chase it in DVD for­mat. It’s worth it.

From Novem­ber 14 through Novem­ber 23, PBS is air­ing an eight-part series, Sound­break­ing, which explores the art of record­ing music and the moments when new sounds were born. The series fea­tures “more than 160 orig­i­nal inter­views with some of the most cel­e­brat­ed record­ing artists of all time,” high­light­ing the “cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy” that trans­formed the way we make music. You can now stream 3 of the first 8 episodes online, with the rest soon to come. If there are any geo-restric­tions, we apol­o­gize in advance.

Watch the first episode, “The Art of Record­ing,” up top. Leg­endary pro­duc­ers like Bri­an Eno, Daniel Lanois, Quin­cy Jones, Tony Vis­con­ti, Rick Rubin and George Mar­tin all make appear­ances.

• Episode 2: Paint­ing With Sound (right above)
• Episode 3: The Human Instru­ment

A new episode should appear each day. To find them, click here and then scroll down.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

265 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

The Only Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong in a Record­ing Stu­dio: Watch the Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered Film (1959)

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Abbey Road Stu­dios, Cour­tesy of the New Google Site “Inside Abbey Road”

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track