Note Generation | Smarter Dev | Page 1

sonic garnet Apr 19, 2026, 9:41 PM

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Does anyone know any good tools/libraries/theory for generating musical notes on a wide range of instruments like piano, guitar, violin, etc (e.g., generating the sound of the note F#4 on an electric guitar) and adding effects like reverb, distortion, delay, etc?
Essentially I’m trying to create a “digital instrument” using C++, and my goal right now is making an audio manager that can generate any sound based on the note, instrument and optional enabled effects with parameters.
The main requirement is being incredibly lightweight, since I want to run this on a raspberry pi 3B while also having a display, button inputs, etc.

I have quite a lot of knowledge about music in general but not at all about the technical aspects that lay under it. All I know is that there’s a formula to convert a note to a frequency and that a sine wave will produce a very basic mono tone similar to a simple synth sound.

Any information, possible libraries, etc is very much appreciated wolfcheer

clever cloakBOT Apr 19, 2026, 9:41 PM

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-# C++ @sharp jasper @fiery trench @violet sandal

fiery trench Apr 19, 2026, 9:43 PM

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you could look at using VST plugins? generally you either need a sample library or to simulate the instrument (hard to do even in commercial software), midi synths do this by outputting just what notes to play, then a processing pipeline plays the vst/soundfont and applies signals

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given that the goal is any note/instrument/effect, probably your best bet is to pick a single instrument you want to simulate, and start looking around for research papers or examples of people simulating that instrument

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a vst would remove the need to simulate, but doesn't always cover the full range of any given instrument, and free ones are limited. that would however give you the capability to use/modify the output
not sure exactly how... but that is what many digital audio workstations do

sonic garnet Apr 19, 2026, 9:49 PM

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Alrighttt, thank you for the information, I appreciate it

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Looks like VST has a very high RAM usage which won’t really be doable on a raspberry pi 3B

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Soundfont might be an option though

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Will look more into that tomorrow

fiery trench Apr 20, 2026, 4:21 PM

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sonic garnet Looks like VST has a very high RAM usage which won’t really be doable on a raspb...

yeah sound processing is quite heavy sadly

sonic garnet Apr 20, 2026, 6:29 PM

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After messing around a bit with Soundfont, this is also quite heavy too like you already mentioned and the sound files take up a ton of space which isnt preffered

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I think that I'm just gonna stick to mathematical sound waves, this'll also add a pretty cool aspect to the whole project

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Music completely created using math

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I did find a few pretty nice formulas already for some sounds

fiery trench Apr 21, 2026, 1:40 PM

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you could look into how retro console sound chips work

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what 'instruments' they offer, the waveforms they can do

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the VRC7 is quite a lovely chip

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SID is a good chip as well

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OPL3 is another interesting one to look at

#Note Generation