I've experimented with so many different sounds, it's difficult to say what the Donovan sound really is, but it's essentially my voice and guitars.
I've established a certain voice over my albums. It can be an obstacle, but in the end, I think it's a strength, because I can build upon that voice, which is ultimately very much mine.
I'm a very style-driven composer, and I like to give every project its own unique stamp.
I try not to repeat myself in fills in all the Rush songs unless it is something simple or something I feel is my own characteristic thing.
The thing about doing mashups and covers is it's great, but a part of you never gets to really showcase what your original sound is like or what your writing voice is like.
I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.
If you're familiar enough with my body of work, my voice is a familiar totem, in a sense. I guess I have something characteristic in the way that I sing, although I'm not very personally self-conscious about it, so I don't think about it that much. But when I hear the record I can tell it's me.
I hear a lot of people saying my stuff sounds the same. When you're in my position, people come to you to give them the same sound in a different type of way.
When you hear me, you know it's me, regardless of the song.
Stylistically, we're trying to push things in different ways, but it always comes out sounding like Tool no matter what we're trying to do.
Coming up, a lot of people I looked up to had a signature sound, but I came up, and I was always in search of one, trying to find it, trying to create one. I was never really able to have a creative signature sound, you know?
What excites me about a lot of the artists I love - and I realize, well, they created their own personal world that I could enter into through their music and through their songwriting. There's people that can do it instrumentally, like Jimi Hendrix or Edge of U2 or Pete Townshend. I didn't have as unique - a purely musical signature. I was a creature of a lot of different influences.
Every drummer that had a name, had a name because of his individual playing. He didn't sound like anybody else, So everybody that I ever listened to, in some form, influenced my taste.
If you have a tone like mine that is recognizable. No matter what I play, when you hear my tone you can tell it's me.
Arranging is the way I put my stamp on my music as much as my guitar playing.
It's really odd, but whatever we do and whatever style we might tackle, we always sound like us.
I think I could walk into any music shop anywhere and with a guitar off the rack, a couple of basic pedals and an amp I could sound just like me. There's no devices, customized or otherwise, that give me my sound.
What I can offer the game is creating a sound that, when you hear it, you know it's mine.
If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don' think it's gotten there yet.
I can't describe my sound. That's something I don't ever think about and I kinda don't want to think about it.
As a horn player, the greatest compliment one can get is when a person comes to you and says, 'I heard this saxophone on the radio the other day and I knew it was you. I don't know the song, but I know it was you on sax.'
You know, people always ask me how I describe my music. First of all I tell them that's their job and then that also one day I hope to have things referred to as Martha Wainwright -esque.
One of the main things I look for in a guitarist is in the sound itself. I go for a certain sound, and I think it's an important thing for making a player more identifiable in the big giant pool of musicians out there. You want a sound that people will recognise just as much as your playing.
It was very important to establish a sound, so that people heard a record on the radio and knew immediately that it was you.
You could call my piano my trademark, or one of my trademarks.
