For my dance piece I chose a somewhat abstracted Swing piece. I wished to write a genre that I was both passionate about and viewed as exciting and something you couldn’t help but to dance to. After researching a few genres I settled on Swing, as I love the liveliness of both the music and the dance. My main inspirations come from Big bands and some of the more classic up tempo Swing pieces. A song I’ve always adored and hoped I could write music similar to is ‘Sing Sing Sing’ by Benny Goodman whose fast-paced, upbeat tempo I have tried to emulate in my piece. I didn’t however wish to stick strictly to the general traits of Jazz. Despite being a dance piece, I didn’t want the piece to be too straightforward and predictable, and so I put an almost false introduction and comprised the piece of two unique chord progressions.

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Before beginning the piece a lot of time was spent researching different styles of swing some more difficult percussion parts and chord progressions. I ended up writing what is now the introduction and didn’t much like it, however the transition between the introduction and the rest of the piece, where the trumpet glissandos down I loved. As a result I made it the introduction. The production of this piece was actually quite simple in its production. Throughout I had several different ways of writing. The first was by recording a rhythm then giving each rhythmic value a note, the second by recording  myself singing then notating that and the third by purely making it up and making sure all harmonies were correct.

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While Jazz genres like Swing and Blues are some of my favourite genres to listen to, I am easily confused by Jazz theory. As such, I used this piece to challenge myself and expand on my knowledge of Jazz. One problem I admittedly have trouble with it developing the piece and creating a nice, climactic second half of the piece and another is my uncertainty in music distribution among instruments. For the ending of this piece I admittedly just repeated one of the main themes, distributed the main tunes amoung the instruments more heavily, made the volume climax and filled in parts where I felt fit. The development and ending of songs is a part that of the song that I'm unsure of how to develop without lossing the connection to the rest of the piece. As such, much of the way I create lengthy songs with few themes is by simply copying and pasting each theme in an order I see fit and editing or adding parts. I wouldn't call this piece in any way finished, but I am happy with how it has turned out for the most part.