This piece of work was inspired by the artwork we discussed in class where the artist trekked along the longest river in Europe and recorded different people speaking in different languages. In this case, I recorded my friends’ and my favorite spots around the Stanford campus and had the idea to turn them into almost like a ballade (hence why I named it Ballade of Stanford) by matching it to my performance of my favorite piano piece ever – Ballade no. 1 by Chopin. The audio is divided into 3 sections, excluding the introduction and conclusion. The first section features the Coupa Café. I recorded a scene at the café while I was waiting for my coffee and edited the sound clip to feature the most characteristic features of the place, including the constant chatter, the grinding of the coffee machines, laughter, and names being called to pick up orders. While this cuts into the audio of spoken words from the left ear, the section of the Ballade selected to match the vibe of this scene cuts in from the right ear. I chose a section of the ballade to match the calm, peaceful ambiance of the place. The second place is CODA (the Computing and Data Science Building). I recorded myself working there and brought out its distinct feature – sound of violent typing. I thought the coda (pun!) of the Chopin Ballade perfectly embodies the speed, ferocity, and fervor of finishing a last-minute assignment. The last section features the Flo-Mo dining hall, where I had my Sunday brunch. This one is my favorite place, and I matched it to a particularly lively and melodic section of the Ballade.

In each section, I layered the spoken text with the recording of the scene and the corresponding Ballade section. It was fun to play around with the different effects e.g., fade in/fade out, mono/stereo, alternating amplitudes, etc. I especially liked balancing a different audio clip in each ear – one of the recorded scenes, and one of the selected section from the Ballade. I had a total of 16 different audios, and I layered a few of them at a time. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I am overall quite happy with how it turned out.