Jekyll2026-10-14T09:34:58-04:00https://greenmancollective.com/sketchpad/feed.xmlThe Greenman Collective | SketchesA home for ambient electronic and computer music: soundscapes, abstract sound art, and everything between the soundwalk and the early electronic studio.J.C. WilsonSpiral 2026·012026-09-24T00:00:00-04:002026-09-24T00:00:00-04:00https://greenmancollective.com/sketchpad/002-spiral-2026-01J.C. WilsonThe spiral renderer2026-09-24T00:00:00-04:002026-09-24T00:00:00-04:00https://greenmancollective.com/sketchpad/001-spiral-rendererThe script, start to finish:

  1. Read the FLAC and mix it down to mono.
  2. Slide a 2048-sample Hann window across it, 512 samples at a time, and take the FFT of each frame. That is a short-time Fourier transform: frequency down the rows, time across the columns.
  3. Convert magnitudes to decibels, set the floor at a low percentile rather than the true minimum, and scale everything to 0–1.
  4. Look each value up in a color gradient (one of two outside inputs).
  5. Read the finished image off as a single strand of pixels and lay that strand down as an Archimedean spiral, center outward.

More turns and a thinner line (thickness being the other input) bring the coils close enough to read like the grooves on a record.

No, I’m not going to share the code. It’s silly, overwrought, and it would feel like lending out my toothbrush.

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