hm, i don't know if you can do anything with spectrum, except sample games. i read an article about aphex twin winning some prize at a gaming magazine as a kid, because he programmed some music generating program, but he done it in assembler as far as i remember and that is not the way to go. way too hard, and way too little to achieve by doing this
better, and out of the box thing is to buy an old commodore 64, it has the venerable SID chip inside (designed by the guy who later founded the ensoniq) which is a synth all in itself. and when you buy that, buy this for 50 euros
http://www.8bitventures.com/mssiah/
it is a c64 cartridge which comes loaded with a drum-machine, mono synth, sampler and sequencer software. synth, drum machine and sampler utilize sid's ability to sound awesome :) AND it has an integrated midi in port, so you can play it from your DAW.
there are other possibilities, you could sell your kidney to buy elektron's sidstation, or learn to solder, and then painstakingly source sid chips and other components with ucapps.de kit, and then machine the enclosure, but that is hard, expensive and unnecessary when you could do all that for a lot less (time AND money). there is also the vst option, i think reFX (vanguard guys) are making some emulation plug-in, but that ain't tr00.
but, remember this, and remember it well, NEVER, under any circumstances, make ANYTHING cheerful and happy and colorful with it, it will just make you into a createdigitalmusic hipster, and you don't want to be that guy...
