Spiral pattern brush with scaled end (not squashed).

[ImpactMerchCreative]

I'm trying to recreate spiral2.jpg image using a particular music sequence, however instead of seeing the spiral music shrink, the variable width profile just seems to squash the brush width instead of shrink it. You can see what it does in the attachment spiral.jpg with notes turning into bars instead of staying rounded. Any hints to how I can get it to work? Thanks!

[Monika Gause]

You might need to prepare the brush for this by distorting it before making it.

Making notes is actually a little complicated, so I can't give you a visual example.

[Monika Gause]

Since I do not have musical notes, here is the principle of what I wanted to suggest: figure out the length you need and then prepare the artbruh like this: 

[kphotopage]

ImpactMerchCreative, I somewhat recreate your inspiration image. Here are the steps I took.

Spiral Tool, create a spiral. In your Document Info panel, it shows that spiral length is 963.682 pt.

To make the Pattern Brush, I made a seamless pattern with the notes. Width 963 pt

Shown in green, is the repeat. (Your stroke will have a Fill & Stroke of color none)

Group your vector notes and stroked rectangle.

Make Pattern Brush

The Spiral, I gave it stroke weight of 40pt

I also applied a custom Variable width to the spiral.

Finally, I applied the Music pattern brush to that spiral.

There is some distortion

K

[kphotopage]

Closer inspection, another thought, it could be those scaled notes were manually placed and rotated on top of those stripped bars.

I say that because those notes (marked in red) do not have any distortion what so ever.

K

[ImpactMerchCreative]

Yes, I think that's right. It looks like they just had the stave as the pattern brush and then added the notes manually to stop the distortion.