How Pink Floyd’s 1994 Live ‘On the Run’ Blended Sequencer and Live Synth

For the 1994 Division Bell tour, Pink Floyd played The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety for the first time since 1975. The biggest challenge was “On the Run” — a studio track built from a 16-step EMS Synthi A sequencer and layers of tape manipulation. Live, they needed something repeatable but still organic.

The answer was a hybrid. Jon Carin played a Kurzweil K2000 loaded with sampled sequences from the original EMS, locked to a master tempo via MIDI. He’d trigger the running arpeggios live, but also improvised synth sweeps and filter tweaks over the top, using a pitch wheel and real-time effects. So it wasn’t a pure sequencer replay — the core pattern was sequenced, but the texture and dynamics were played by hand each night. The result sounded identical to the album on first listen, but Carin’s subtle variations kept it from being a tape playback.