What do YOU know about the place where you grew up ?

Make a list of interesting places--
use any category you can think of: famous people who live there or were born there;
landmarks or historical places; churches; lakes, rivers, beaches, etc.

Take this list and mix up all of the categories to come up with a new list. (For instance, make groups of 2-4 place names)

Use your revised list as the inspiration for a piece of music.

The above is exactly the steps the composer Thomas Farmer went through to come up with his score for the SC Dances cycle--10 books of "imaginary dances" using place names, latitude and longitude coordinates, zip codes, elevations and counties from the Palmetto State as his inspiration. Books 1-9 contain cakewalks, waltzes and square dances--none of which sound like traditional cakewalks, waltzes or square dances.

Book X is the culmination of the cycle, incorporating all of the methods of transcription of the text items into music utilized in the prior nine books. But instead o