[ Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" plays ]
-♪ Ooh, I bet you wondered how I knew ♪
-I started collecting records at the age of 5,
and the first single I bought was
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles.
-♪ With some other guy you knew before ♪
-I mean, my first record I bought would "Be-Bop-A-Lula"
by Gene Vincent.
Whew. Magical.
-♪ Took me by surprise
-I do remember the very first 45
I bought was "I Heard It Through the Grapevine,"
and singing in the kitchen with my sisters.
-♪ I heard it through the grapevine ♪
♪ Not much longer would you be mine ♪
-Records, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s.
These are not just vehicles for music.
They are reflections of ourselves
and the times we live in.
-♪ You turned me on
-So you had your cassette, and you'd put
all your favorite songs on it.
-Make a collection
that you wanted to give to someone you liked.
-This is how I feel, you know, about you.
-♪ I'd share with you
[ Classical music plays ]
-As technology has evolved,
each generation has had a format to call its own.
-When I was born, people were listening to vinyl.
[ "Your Love" playing ]
-♪ Your love
-The first album I paid my own allowance for
was Larry Graham and Grand Central Station.
That wasmy album.
-Everything about vinyl was great.
The smell of it when you took it out of the package.
-You'd get liner notes, which I always loved to read.
-I knew who engineered that record,
and I knew who produced that record.
That was my complete and total obsession.
♪♪
-This is my modern-day jukebox here,
where I can hear new music as it comes out.
They send it to me. They MP3 me.
-You get access to all the songs on the planet,
and I think that is brilliant.
-We're heading to a whole bunch of new rules.
Like, some people are, like, "Oh, I miss going
to a record store and just taking the record
and opening it up and smelling the -- Well,
I say, "Well, you're being romantic, and that's wonderful.
Let's write some books about it."
-This is the story
of our on-again/off-again love affair with musical formats
and how magical pieces of wax, plastic,
and silicon changed the world.
-All people, always, think their time, their music, was better.
Mine actually was.
♪♪
-Okay, then. Okay.
-It'll be an F for you.
-Here we go.
Just one more time.
-Right after I say, "Are you sure?"
Da da da -- yeah.
-Oh.
-Hal, here's how I want to do it. Takes like this.
-All right, it's fun time. Fun time.
-Here we go.
-Oh, really? -17, take one.
-This will be the keeper. -[Laughs]
♪♪
[ Big band music playing ]
♪♪
-"Soundbreaking" is available on DVD.
The companion book is also available.
To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-Play-PBS.
♪♪