How Pink Floyd recreated the cash register and heartbeat from Dark Side for the Pulse tour

For the 1994 tour that became Pulse, Pink Floyd didn’t just play The Dark Side of the Moon start-to-finish—they rebuilt its sound effects live. The cash register clatter from “Money” came from a real antique register backstage, loaded with actual coins. A stagehand hit the keys on cue, and the sound was mixed with a triggered sample to give it that crisp, percussive attack you hear on the album. On stage, the band sometimes used a rotating prop register for visuals, but the money sound itself was that honest-to-god mechanical ring.

The heartbeat that opens and closes the album—and the live set—was simpler but just as deliberate. It was a synthesized low-frequency pulse, played through a subwoofer that could literally shake the arena floor. The band synced it to a strobe light so the thump matched a slow, blood-pulse