Moe Z MD

In this April 15, 2009 Gearslutz forum reply, engineer Paul Arnold shares that, while working with Tupac during the recording of "Outlaw", he and Moe Z MD "tracked the beat from Moe's Roland W-30 and Emu SP-1200 as Pac rehearsed the parts with his family."

In this April 15, 2009 Gearslutz forum reply, engineer Paul Arnold shares that, while working with Tupac during the recording of "Outlaw", he and Moe Z MD "tracked the beat from Moe's Roland W-30 and Emu SP-1200 as Pac rehearsed the parts with his family."

Visible throughout this June 7, 2020 video.

The Yamaha MOTIF6 is listed on Moe Z MD's official Yamaha artist page. It is pictured and discussed in this interview from the Summer 2003 issue of Yamaha's All Access, also appearing in the background of this June 7, 2020 video.

Moe-Z's main instrument these days is a Yamaha Motif music production synthesizer. "Oh man," he says, "I just love that keyboard! It's incredible for writing on the road. It's a total workstation - you don't even need a separate drum machine. It has a great mix of old and new sounds. You can play, sample and program whole tracks all within one box. It's easy to use, too. I've barely even looked at the manual. I've been able to learn almost everything by feel and common sense."

How does Moe-Z - who also plays drums, bass, guitar, sax, flute, and trumpet - rate the onboard instrumental sounds? "Some of them are so close to the real thing, it's incredible," he says. "I recently recorded some tracks using the guitar sounds, and if you didn't watch me play them on the Motif, you'd swear I was really playing guitar. The keyboard sounds are also very realistic, especially the electric pianos and organs. The bass sounds are great, too-there are uprights, fat roundwound tones, deep drum-machine-type basses, and DX7 sounds from back in the day. There's even a patch called 'Snoop Bass,' which sounds exactly like Snoop Dogg's synth-bass sound."

Moe-Z plans to include the new Motif tracks on his upcoming solo debut. He promises that the as-yet-untitled disc will be as unpredictable as his career: "There are lots of surprises. For example, I might sing over the sort of track that you'd expect a rap on, or rap over a smooth track. I've never wanted to do exactly the same thing as someone else, because when you copy another sound, you diminish the meaning of your music. So I just do what makes me happy."

The Akai MPC2000 is listed on Moe Z MD's official Yamaha artist page as an "NPC2000", also appearing in two pictures included in this interview from the Summer 2003 issue of Yamaha's All Access (here and here).

Visible in two photos of Moe Z MD in his studio (here and here), which was taken for this interview from the Summer 2003 issue (Issue 6) of Yamaha's All Access.

Visible in two photos of Moe Z MD in his studio (here and here), which was taken for this interview from the Summer 2003 issue (Issue 6) of Yamaha's All Access.