I'm a huge music fan and have something to listen to almost any time of the day. I also grew up watching a lot of Monstercat and other YouTube channels that have music visualizations that go with the music, and I set out to create something similar that automatically generates visualization software based on an MP3 file. It's possible to take it a step further with a browser extension, but it's a simple Python project that hosts a web page that you can drag and drop a file onto as a visualization.
How I created a music visualizer in Python
There are so many different libraries you can use in Python
I use Python for many different projects and there is so much you can do with a combination of different libraries. In this project, we use Flask as the backend, which provides a simple server that handles file uploads and enables real-time communication between server and browser via Socket.IO. When a user drags and drops an audio file onto the web page, Flask receives the file and the frontend uses the Web Audio API to analyze its audio data.
We use the Web Audio API because it is a browser-native technology that you can use for audio processing and analysis. We can then break the sound down into frequency bands such as bass, mid and high and map these to different visual bars on a screen. In the front end, HTML and JavaScript (with the Canvas API) take care of the user interface and visualization.
After an audio file is dragged and dropped into the drop zone, the AudioContext in the Web Audio API analyzes the frequency spectrum of the audio in real time and splits it into amplitude values for different frequencies. This data will be passed on to
Finally, the player plays the audio file in the browser and gets the filename to place it in an H2 under the header. It combines it with real-time frequency analysis for the final product. Python's Flask library is incredibly powerful and was also the basis for my personal finance tracker, which I built into it as well.
Run it locally
All you need is Python
If you want to run this program, it's not hard at all! All you need is Python and other relevant modules, especially Flask to host the website. You can then drag and drop an MP3 file onto the page that loads it and it will work and start playing immediately. Although I didn't add any media controls to the player, you can add them yourself to stop and resume playback, ensuring the visualizer stays in sync with the music playing at the same time.
You can check out the project on GitHub to get started! You need to make sure Python is installed.