How Alan Parsons and Peter James Built the Tape Loops for 'Money' and 'Time' on Dark Side of the Moon

The most interesting part: those cash register sounds on “Money” weren’t done with a sampler — they were built by hand on an old mono tape machine. Alan Parsons and assistant engineer Peter James recorded coins being thrown into a mixing desk, a bowl, and an ashtray, then spooled the raw tape onto a Studer J37 four-track machine. They physically spliced the loops with splicing tape and a razor blade, then adjusted the length until the chaotic rhythm fell perfectly into 7/4 time. The loop ran continuously on the machine while the band played along.

For “Time,” they did something similar but with a wall of old alarm clocks on the studio floor. Parsons and James recorded the clocks all going off at once using a Neumann U87 microphone. They then took the master tape, cut a loop, and ran it through a Binson Echorec delay unit to create that decaying, dissonant chime effect. The loop was threaded onto an Ampex AG440 tape machine, with the tension carefully set so it wouldn’t slip during the overnight sessions.

Both tricks were cheap, analog, and completely hands-on — no quantization, no click tracks. The loops would sometimes stretch or break mid-take, so Parsons kept multiple copies sliced and ready on the splicing block. That rough, human edge is what gives those tracks their swing.