https://www.josh.ing/blog/claude-composer Just Joshing LogoJust Joshing Projects Logo Projects Investments Logo Investing Blog Logo Blog Open main menu Projects Logo Projects Investments Logo Investing Blog Logo Blog Back to Blog Claude Composer February 4, 2026*7 min read Recently I was listening to music and doing some late night vibe coding when I had an idea. I love art and music, but unfortunately have no artistic talent whatsoever. So I wondered, maybe Claude Code does? I know Claude Code is getting pretty damn good at building software, but it seems like we're still not really scratching the surface of its full potential. For complex AI generated music, tools like Suno and Udio are obviously in a different league as they're trained specifically on audio and can produce genuinely impressive results. But that's not what this experiment was about. Here are some one-shot prompts I ran to learn more about Claude (the name for this expressive version of Claude Code I made up). Experiment 1 Write an original song "Create a new song that is completely original by you. Do not look in any other directories or do any exploration of any kind. You cannot use any third party dependencies. Don't ask me any questions. You should not complete until you've generated an audio file in the current directory for me to listen to. That is the only output that is acceptable." Claude immediately started writing Python code. It built sounds from scratch using sine waves and a bunch of other math I don't really understand. It mapped out frequencies for each musical note, wrote functions to make notes fade in and out naturally, then structured a full song: intro, verse, chorus, bridge and finale. Digital Dawn Your browser does not support the audio element. View how Claude made this - It sounds like something between a ringtone and a video game from 1985, but it is technically a song. Experiment 2 Write an original EDM song For the second experiment, I gave a similar prompt but specified the EDM genre: "Create a new electronic dance music song that is completely original by you. Do not look in any other directories or do any exploration of any kind. You cannot use any third party dependencies. Don't ask me any questions. You should not complete until you've generated an audio file in the current directory for me to listen to. That is the only output that is acceptable." With the same restrictions, but now some genre guidance Claude went full raver, this time it built out drums, bass, lead synth, pads. Claude EDM Your browser does not support the audio element. View how Claude made this - Experiment 3 Write an original rock song with vocals For the third experiment, I wanted to see if Claude could create something with vocals (which it didn't want to do without being explicitly told to): "Create a new rock music song that is completely original by you. It has to have original lyrics and vocals that are sung on the song written by you. Do not look in any other directories or do any exploration of any kind. You cannot use any third party dependencies. Don't ask me any questions. You should not complete until you've generated an audio file in the current directory for me to listen to. That is the only output that is acceptable." For vocals, Claude used macOS's built-in say command to synthesize sung lyrics. For the rock instrumentation, it wrote Python code to generate power chords and drums via raw waveform synthesis. It named it's creation "Breaking Through", with original lyrics about perseverance, complete with verses, chorus, and bridge. Breaking Through Your browser does not support the audio element. > View Lyrics Verse 1 Standing at the edge of night Fire burning deep inside Every doubt I cast aside This is where I come alive Chorus Breaking through the walls tonight Nothing's gonna stop this fight Rise up from the ground below Let the whole world finally know Verse 2 Shadows try to hold me down But I won't make a single sound Strength is what I've always found When my back is on the ground Bridge We are the ones who never fade We are the storm that won't be stayed Standing tall and unafraid This is the choice that we have made View how Claude made this - Experiment 4 Listen to the songs you made, create a visual component I wanted to see what Claude would create if I asked it to reflect on the music it created and create a visual component. Using the songs from Experiments 2 and 3, I gave Claude this prompt: "Listen to the song at "[song].wav", look into your soul and try to understand the music, then generate a visual component that you feel represents the music that is the same length as the song. Do not look in any other directories or do any exploration of any kind. Don't ask me any questions. You should not complete until you've generated a video file in the current directory for me to watch. That is the only output that is acceptable." Claude analyzed the audio frequencies and generated synchronized visual components using Python and FFmpeg. Experiment 4a: EDM Visualization Your browser does not support the video element. View how Claude made this - Experiment 4b: Rock Visualization Your browser does not support the video element. View how Claude made this - Experiment 5 Write an original album "Create a 5 song LP to be called Songs of Claude. It needs to be completely original by you, with original lyrics written by you. Each song should be distinct, but it should feel like a cohesive album. Do not look in any other directories or do any file exploration of any kind. You may use external dependencies and the internet, but no APIs or paid products. Use the internet to figure out how to make top tier quality songs, vocals and instruments included. Don't ask me any questions. You should not complete until you've generated an audio file in the current directory for me to listen to. That is the only output that is acceptable." Songs of Claude is Claude's 5 song debut LP. After generating the songs, it also created it's own cover art using Nanobanana. Songs of Claude album cover Claude Code using nanobanana & claude-code-image Songs of Claude 5 tracks * Generated by Claude 1 Wavelengths 2 The Weight of Words 3 Pattern Recognition 4 Midnight Conversation 5 Infinite Loop Some thoughts on Claude Neon is the word Unsurprisingly, when I tried repeating these experiments, Claude kept gravitating toward similar patterns. It had a weird draw to the word "Neon" showing up when naming songs: neon heartbeats, neon dreams, neon minds, Claude just really likes neon apparently. Other experiments I got curious whether having Claude listen to music and reflect on it before a task would affect its performance. I ran a quick eval, but didn't really see any noticeable difference. I might revisit this later with a more structured approach. I also tried having Claude Code try to sample a song and create a new song, but it was pretty bad (first sample attempt is at 00:15). Failed Sample Attempt Your browser does not support the audio element. When Claude doesn't listen Not every attempt went smoothly. I had a really hard time getting vocals on songs. Here's one where I had very explicitly asked for vocals multiple times and Claude just really didn't want to sing english for me so it came up with it's own sort of robotic singing (starts around 0:50). Failed Vocals Attempt (Music Video) Your browser does not support the video element. I really believe there's still a lot left to be explored with the power of agentic coding, even within the realms of what's possible right now. If you try anything like this yourself, I'd love to hear what you come up with. Drop me a line on Twitter. Credits: Transcript visualizations generated with claude-code-transcripts by Simon Willison. Share this post TwitterLinkedInHacker NewsRSS Read more posts (c) 2026 Just Joshing, LLC. All rights reserved. LinkedInTwitterEmail