I would start with Octave. You can use it to quickly learn the math behind music synthesis and experiment with the various methods. It is open source and available for Windows,Linux,Mac and Android (at least, there are probably other ports).
Then you can concurrently learn a programming language (IMHO based on your post, Python might be a good place to start).
You might also take a look at CSound which is a dedicated environment and programming language for sound synthesis. The CSound documentation pages also have references to a wide variety of other available systems (like Max and Reaktor).
If you are going to ultimately create audio apps for the iphone then I don't think you can avoid C/C++/Objective C but you will have an easier time doing the sound synthesis experimentation in an environment tailored to that function.
Then you can concurrently learn a programming language (IMHO based on your post, Python might be a good place to start).
You might also take a look at CSound which is a dedicated environment and programming language for sound synthesis. The CSound documentation pages also have references to a wide variety of other available systems (like Max and Reaktor).
If you are going to ultimately create audio apps for the iphone then I don't think you can avoid C/C++/Objective C but you will have an easier time doing the sound synthesis experimentation in an environment tailored to that function.