Mainly I want to use the computer (pc running linux) as a musical instrument -- ie construct ways to input notes, changing volumes, timbres ect in real time, eventually have a system set up to run a sequence back with variations, different instruments, etc. while I play along with some other voice...
Soundfonts & fluidsynth work very well for producing basically ear-friendly sounds... Pd looks ideal for handling HID input, keeping track of incoming notes, doing interesting things with these.
But to connect these two things I've been using csoundapi~ and fluidsynth opcodes. As I understand this, pd is running a copy of csound in a sort of virtual box?
Anyway, it gets tricky to hit the same note, same channel in close succession, because the repetition going through the fluidengine cuts the first note off -- and in any case that first note is not available for separate processing until it comes out through the fluidOut opcode, mushed together with everything else sent to that fluidengine.
Running multiple fluidengines in csound is quite doable, but starts slowing the system down after the first two or three...