Using the Audio Waveform plug-in I’ve built several comps with interesting looks, including many with 3D space. I linked some of the waveform settings to a control layer to offset multiple copies. You can swap out your own audio and make changes to the control layer.

If you want to make some more serious changes, delete all of the copies except for one. Then make changes to the settings and then duplicate it a dozen times or so.

Most of the concepts used to offset multiple copies can be found in this tutorial. You can also extract keyframes from audio with this animation tutorial. And, if you are new to audio in After Effects check this blog post too.

Watch Sample Video

Download AE Project (CS4)