It seems that Python is fast enough [1] to create a real time FM music synthesizer (think Yamaha DX-7). I made one that you can see here: https://github.com/irmen/synthesizer
The synthesizer can create various waveforms (sine, sawtooth, pulse etc.) and lets you modify them in various ways. You can apply FM (frequency modulation), PWM (pulse-width modulation), volume envelopes, vibrato, and reverb/echo. It is primarily based around oscillators that are represented as generator functions in the code. A GUI is provided that gives access to most of the features interactively, and lets you play a tune with your created FM instrument on a piano keyboard. You will need Python 3.x and pyaudio to be able to hear sound, and matplotlib if you want to see graphical diagrams of generated waveforms. I can't create nice music myself but this was a fun project to build and to learn how FM synthesizers work internally :) Irmen [1]: meaning it can generate and play fairly complex waveforms based on multiple oscillators and filters in real time in one 44.1 kHz audio channel. That is on a 3.2 ghz machine. With enough oscillator/filters combined however it starts to stutter and cannot do it anymore in real time. However you can still generate those waveforms and save them to a .wav on disk to play afterwards. The code only uses one CPU core though so maybe there's room for improvement. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
