I spent time working on my big band piece for Stonethrow Films, the example they’d given me for what they wanted was In The Mood by Glenn Miller. After listening through the piece a few times I found the song was made up of brass, drums and a double bass. I tried writing many different ways usually starting with a melody however none of them really managed to stick with me or the group so after about 5 attempts I tried something new and started with a drum rhythm, this was a lot more productive but I spent a lot of time fiddling with getting the right time signature and tempo. After I made a drum loop that I’d liked I started work on making a little bass line, I just made a walking bass line the goes up back down and has a little fill at the end. After this I added the stabs just to add something to increase the pace. Finally I made a little melody that I really slammed on with the velocity of each note, this was because when the velocity was maxed it made the notes bend and break up slightly and sounded more realistic.
http://www.normanweinberg.com/uploads/8/1/6/4/81640608/911811kb_swing_part_1.pdf (I used this to figure out how to make a drum rhythm)