Footnotes

Tim Lowe is a self-taught musician who plays guitar, saxophone, piano and anything else he can lay his hands on.

He's been in several different bands (The Footnotes, The Swingjazza, etc.) playing rock, pop, soul, and jazz, ranging from solo performances to a 7-piece band. Notably he was a founder member of the trad jazz band 'The Sugarfoot Stompers' which evolved into 'Just Jazz', with a more varied repertoire that strayed into pop and rock, as well as traditional and more modern melodic jazz standards.


"About my music:

"My style of music is mainly swing jazz. Unless otherwise stated, it's all original music, composed, arranged and performed by me. Like all music that you've not heard before, it should grow on you the more you listen to it.

A lot of it is developed, played and recorded on a PC (as a lot of composers do), using virtual instruments.
These instruments use samples, or computer generated sounds to mimic real instruments.
These are computer generated sounds, but this is not computer generated music.
The sounds are the equivalent of an artist's tubes of paint. Each note is carefully selected, mixed and painted into the composition.

There are some recordings using only real instruments, some using only virtual ones, and some tunes that use a mixture of both. My aim is to make it make the music sound as realistic as possible, so you don't notice the difference.

The line-up consists of a mixture of traditional big-band instruments
Typically drums, bass, guitar and piano at the back, trumpets, saxophones, clarinet and trombones at the front.
You may find occasional other instruments, such as a vibraphone, on some tunes.
Brushes are favoured on the drums for several tracks, many of which have that skippy swing-time rhythm which puts swingjazza firmly in the swing jazz category.

If you like it, you can join up for free, with or without your own band page, create your own 'radio stations' of favourite tunes, become friends with, or fans of bands, upload tunes, photos and videos etc.

As with any free site like this there's a wide variety in the quality and styles of music. In amongst it all there are some very talented musicians and composers. Why not have a look around and listen for yourself...

31 December 2010:
I spent the first half of this year composing, arranging and recording 16 new tunes under the "Swingjazza" umbrella, and 3 under my other bandname "The Footnotes" which is generally my other (non-jazz) music.

As with every artform, this has been a learning curve because swingjazza as a concept and style only came into being this year with the purchase of my new recording software.

I created 3 jazz albums of 6-7 tunes each in this time. Most of the tunes on this site are from the third album which I consider my best, although there are some from my first and second, and the whole of my first album can be heard on the soundclick site.

A further 10 tunes/songs added were previous, or re-workings of previous, recordings.

The second half of the year seems to have been spent creating this and re-arranging and re-mixing most of the tunes to try to make them sound as good in the compressed mp3 format on the internet as they do on the PC where the file sizes are generally about ten times the size.

Hopefully I've got the hang of it now, and there won't have to be so much time spent uploading new versions of the tunes to see how they sound (or working out how to update these websites).

So, in theory, in 2011, I should be able to get back to composing.
That's the hard part, creating a tune and arrangement out of thin air. Wish me luck".

Official Websites: http://thefootnotes.co.uk/