How Pink Floyd Built the Synth Pads and Tape Loops on 'Welcome to the Machine' and 'Have a Cigar'

The key weapon for those cold, industrial synth pads was the EMS VCS3 (and its portable cousin the Synthi AKS), which Roger Waters and engineer Brian Humphries fed through a Leslie speaker cabinet and a Binson echo unit for that wobbly, alien texture. On “Welcome to the Machine,” the bass pulse and the descending chord sequence were actually made by putting a VCS3 oscillator directly onto the tape machine’s playback head, then physically slowing the tape down with the vari-speed control—creating a tape-loop-style drone that changed pitch as the speed wavered.

For the percussive, clanging loops in the same song, the band recorded short bursts of acoustic guitar, piano, and even a coin being dropped onto a glass table, then spliced those sounds into continuous loops on quarter-inch tape that ran between the tape machine’s capstan and a separate microphone stand. The combination of the VCS3’s unstable oscillators and these hand-made tape loops gave “Welcome to the Machine” its claustrophobic, factory-floor atmosphere.

“Have a Cigar” uses a more straightforward VCS3 pad—the long, breathy chord that enters after the first verse—but it’s processed through a Kepex noise gate triggered by a snare drum to make it pulse in rhythm. The synth part was played directly into the console’s mic preamp (no DI box) to get that slightly overdriven, gritty edge. Both songs relied heavily on Abbey Road’s