In support of his new CD, "Hotel", Moby gave an exclusive Q&A
session for Winter Music Conference attendees. From his new album and
musical tour, to his appearance on NBC's The Apprentice, Moby has been
all over the place and in the musical limelight.

It was a great opportunity to see Moby up close and personal (there
were about 100 people there). Moby "loves questions," and fielded quite
a few from the audience. He related his philosophies about music that
"the act of making music is precious" going on to say that "if you make
music you are proud of, do everything to get people to listen to it."
From reflecting back on his first appearance at "Cameo" in Miami to his
more recent success in licensing music, Moby was successful in
inspiring his audience to create greatness.

Moby touched on just about everything including politics,
consumerism, alternative ways to get dance music heard,the last movie
he saw (South Park: The Movie, like "50 times"), and his current favorite bands in
NYC. He talked about the differences between working with an
independent and a major label and how that has allowed more flexibility
in his album creation.

To a bass player from the audience who had been the recipient
of negative attitude and comments that his music was "not commercial
enough," Moby said that "if you really believe in yourself you've got
to keep doing it."

Moby also informed us that he didn't use any samples on this
album. Hotel is his original artist album he created with Steinber's Cubase and Digidesign's
Pro Tools on his Power Mac G4 ("the one with the silver door"). When the
Apple rep in the audience invited Moby over to the Apple booth to
enlighten him on Logic Moby informed him that he prefers to stick with
Cubase because it's more familiar. What blew me away was the fact that
he's running it on OS 9 because "they don't run at the same time on OS
X." (Steinberg and Digidesign: Get him hooked up with OS X, would ya!)

Get a session pass to next year's WMC and go to the conferences, it's worth it.

Ed: Thanks, Lizi! Moby (up through his last album, at least)
reportedly used an old Mac IIci so he could run an early release of
Cubase because he liked a specific groove quantize he claims Steinberg
changed. So this is one oldskool Cubase lover. (And Apple, I'm a big
Logic lover and not tempted at all by Cubase, but you could learn
something from its wild arpeggiator and other MIDI fx — stuff that's
right up Moby's alley. Predecessors of the modern Logic and Cubase were
rivals back in Atari ST days, and their competition has made them the
deep products they are today.) -PK