{"slug": "scrimshaw-jukebox", "title": "Scrimshaw Jukebox", "summary": "Simon Willison released Scrimshaw Jukebox, a tool built from a Claude Opus 5.5 prompt that asked the model to design a simple text-based music format, build an artifact that plays it aloud, and include example tracks in the style of the original Secret of Monkey Island. Willison said the results were \"surprisingly good\" and leaned harder into the Monkey Island theme than intended, and he speculated that competent music composition may be a newly emerged capability for text models, comparable to recent 3D graphics advances, though he noted careful experiments with other recent and older models would be needed to confirm whether the ability is new.", "body_md": "**Tool:** [Scrimshaw Jukebox](https://tools.simonwillison.net/scrimshaw-jukebox)\n\nI wanted to see if Claude Opus 5.5 could compose music, so [I tried this](https://claude.ai/share/1f721c20-2499-4d23-b368-3ab57146d956):\n\n`I want you to write some computer game music for me. First design simple text based format for the music and build an artifact that can play it out loud - include some example tracks in that artifact`\n\n`I am looking for music of the quality of the original secret of Monkey Island`\n\nIt leaned a lot harder into the Monkey Island theme than I had intended, but the results are surprisingly good.\n\nI wonder if the ability to compose competent music is similar to the 3D graphics thing - a new capability for text models that emerged in the past few months?\n\nWould need some careful experiments with other recent and not-so-recent models to confirm if this is new or if they've been able to do this for a while.\n\nTags: [ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai), [generative-ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai), [llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms), [claude](https://simonwillison.net/tags/claude), [vibe-coding](https://simonwillison.net/tags/vibe-coding)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scrimshaw-jukebox", "canonical_source": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Oct/6/scrimshaw-jukebox/", "published_at": "2026-10-06 15:17:39+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-06 15:47:39.347341+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "large-language-models", "artificial-intelligence", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Simon Willison", "Scrimshaw Jukebox", "Claude Opus 5.5", "Secret of Monkey Island"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scrimshaw-jukebox", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scrimshaw-jukebox.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scrimshaw-jukebox.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scrimshaw-jukebox.jsonld"}}