Undertow is a grade 4 piece of music by John Mackey. Most of Mackey’s pieces have very heavy and intricate percussion features. Undertow is a faster piece. This piece starts big and goes to a continuous bass line. There is some back and forth between some of the sections. There is heavy percussion all throughout this song. This song has a lot of quiet moments all through the song. There is a flute solo which can make it hard to hear if the background figures are too loud. That being said, the piece ends with a percussion feature. The percussion use many small instruments to create interesting noises.