Featured Musician: Ann Feld

Bonjour! My name is Ann Feld and I am an electronic pop musician from Norfolk, Virginia, which is about three hours south of where I grew up. I was surrounded by the arts as a child: listening to John Denver and other 70s pop music from my parents, enjoying music class in school, and writing stories for various writing contests in school, to name a few. I realized early on that I loved being creative, and that has stayed with me ever since.

When I wasn’t filling my computer hard drive and school notebooks with stories and poems, I was usually found playing the clarinet in the school band, taking guitar lessons, and singing along with the radio. After years of band class, I decided to join the high school choir and this gave me my first performing opportunities as a singer, both as part of a group during our quarterly concerts and also solo during our yearly talent show called the Cabaret Show.

No matter what, my parents were always there supporting me in my singing and writing. They also supported me in my desire to learn foreign languages; in high school, I had an intense love for the French language, a love that has stayed with me and always will. As soon as I could correctly conjugate verbs, I would write little poems and journal entries in French. Later, once I became more confident in my use of French, I would write songs in French as well.

As far as my songwriting, I didn’t start taking it seriously until college. In high school, songwriting was something I did in my spare time and didn’t show to anyone else, sometimes not even my parents. However in college, I wanted that to change. Back then, all I could afford was a four-track machine, and on school breaks, I would come home and play around with recording potential songs, accompanied by my guitar. My personal music tastes changed from oldies music to emotional female vocalists, and they became a major influence on my music: Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Imogen Heap, Charlotte Martin, and French pop superstar Mylène Farmer. I began writing emotional songs with many layers in the vocals and instruments, songs to which people would listen and feel something, whether it was happiness, sadness, or a memory of something which the song evokes. They were not commercial, but I didn’t intend for them to be as such. I was writing for myself.

In late college, I transitioned to recording on my computer using GarageBand, and while it gave me a good start in modern recording, eventually I wanted something better. That’s when Logic Express came in. I had a huge learning curve when I first got the program, since I’ve never taken any classes in studio engineering, so most of what I learned was from trial and error, how-to books, and from what sounded good in my songs. I’m still learning but I’m getting better with every song I create.

I now have my own mini-studio in my home, with a small mixer, Logic Express, a piano keyboard, and a variety of microphones for my voice and other instruments. I love having my own studio so that I don’t have to pay for studio time, allowing my imagination to run wild for as long as I’d like, using anything I like. My creative process has taken on a new angle; beforehand, I would only write around a melody or a chord progression, but now I can create whole backgrounds for songs before the melody comes in. It all depends on what comes to me first!

I am also learning to play the piano more proficiently. For years, I’d wanted to learn how to play the piano, and that changed last October when I purchased a piano keyboard and some songbooks! Now, playing piano has allowed me to play more interactive live shows on my Ustream channel (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/annfeld), and it has opened up my songwriting. Now, I am writing songs to be played specifically on my piano, then going in to Logic to flesh them out, but still retaining an acoustic feel so that I can perform the song solely on the piano if needed. I’m no Tori Amos, but I’m picking it all up very quickly!

So far I have released two albums: Welcome to the Aquarium in early 2010 and Coming Up For Air in December 2010, both of which are available on iTunes. My first album was recorded in six months in GarageBand, while I was still getting the hang of mixing and recording; the second was recorded over a longer period, using some of the best songs I had recorded last year.

One of my greatest accomplishments so far was making that second album. I’m not ashamed of my first album, but I like my voice and songwriting even better now, and I feel like my ideas and songs are becoming more likable and are stronger. While recording Coming Up For Air, I started taking voice lessons again, something I hadn’t done since high school. Taking voice lessons really opened my range and helped me to become more confident and self-assured, and that comes across in my singing on that album.

To give you a taste of what I do, here’s a song I originally wrote for Welcome to the Aquarium but with re-recorded vocals, called Fade Into Me (2011):

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_6431340

Another favorite song of mine, called I’m Letting That Go, written after an emotional month last year:

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_4094863

And now for something I’ve done in the last few months! Here’s a new song I recorded as well, about my own spiritual journey, called Harbor:

http://annfeld.bandcamp.com/

I also like to write in French as well as in English. In fact, one of my longterm plans is to write and record an album en français! In the last few years since I have become very comfortable with using French, I have found that some of my songs come to me in English or in French. It just depends on the subject matter, since writing in French is different from writing in English. French pop lyrics tend to be less direct and, at times, more poetic than in English, so it all depends on how I feel like getting my message across!

To demonstrate what I mean, here is one of my songs from my second album, a song called La lumière et l’ombre, a song I wrote in French about a young girl I met who had a very sad home life, with an English translation included of what is being sung.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=114G6GYFPhA

I hoped that you have enjoyed reading my post and if you like what you hear, you can check out my website at http://www.annfeld.com and follow me on Twitter if you’d like!  @annfeld