How to use Python on a RPi to develop a custom headless guitar FX box

Playing your musical instrument through a Raspberry Pi programmed in Python to add effects in real time might seem like an unrealistic idea. Yet I've been using such a setup for hundreds of hours of rehearsals and gigs and it works great!

It's even relatively easy to do... provided you find the right combination of hardware, OS, libraries and configuration.

In this talk, we will show how using python with the powerful pyo module allows for quick and easy implementation of real-time audio processing chains, allowing for exploration of various effects like delay, wah, distortion, etc. We will also propose an overview of all the technical details involved in making a self-contained headless unit (hardware and OS selection, system configuration, headless user interaction, ...)

Whether you want to experiment with your latest idea of the best delaystortionverb pedal ever, or process the sound of an unusual instrument, or simply take pride in playing through FX's you designed yourself, this talk will offer you insights and guide you towards achieving your goal.

Even if music is not (yet) your jam, you’ll see that real-time digital signal processing (DSP) in Python is perfectly feasible, and uncover new paths for experimentation and exploration.

And if you are passionate about music, you might enjoy discovering the harpejji, a new instrument built like a guitar but played like a keyboard, that was the original use case for the developments presented here.