Developing a digital synthesizer in C++: Part 0 - Introduction

I will be graduating from my high school in about one and a half years and for my diploma, I am required to write some form of research paper called a "Vorwissenschaftliche Arbeit" or "Pre-scientific paper", to give you a bad English translation. This is due to a major education reform that's taking place in Austria and my year is the first to be affected by it. Anyway, my topic is, as the title states, "Developing a digital synthesizer in C++". I'm planning on finishing the actual software as of 2014, and then I have another half year to write about it. In the meantime, I will write lots of articles on the different experiences I encounter and post code-snippets under "an" open source license , should anyone seek to do something similar.