…sounds like

To sound alike without being just a sound-alike is more than just a matter of carefully interpolating original material. It first calls for us recognizing the idiomatic aspect of a given piece.

Almost anyone can just read Shakespeare; those who set themselves apart make you forget the words were written for them. You worry about their stability when they struggle to cast out the "dark spot".

With popular commercial music used in film underscores and themes, television commercials, Popular music, etc., one composer can make a change that becomes the new idiom. It happened with Miles Davis' only original music score for Elevator to the Gallows. Others followed in his path. The film music of John Williams became the filmscore template for big budget futuristic adventures, while Vangelis' imaginative Bladerunner score picked up from smokey Film Noir Jazz to create the standard for monster synth atmospheres.

Ennio Morricone was one of those trendsetters. He came in with his psychedelic mysterious Duane Eddy baritone guitar motifs greatly contrasting clay flutes and a soothing vesper time men's chorale softly singing heart-warmingly while poor Eli Wallach's "Tuco" was being beaten within an inch of his life by Lee Van Cleef ('s character).

I make mention of Maestro Morricone because he inspired me to compose before I was even aware. When I was a young boy emulating the whistle from For a Few Dollars More in a cavernous hallway, I was amazed at how his music travel with me. Now from Knarls Barkley's "Crazy" to every 15th television commercial, I hear Ennio living on.

We don't always get the privileged to be ostensibly different. But perhaps if we can read Shakespeare or write Morricone in our own voice, listeners will soon enough request to see who we are under our easy fit mask of recognizability.