Been working on getting some 3D renders up because my sketching skills may not be up to par. Also, I just confirmed some features.

-- Monophonic/Polyphonic keyboard
-- Choose from pulse, triangle, and sawtooth oscillators
-- LP/HP filter
-- 3.5mm and 1/4'' audio out jacks

In consideration we have:
-- Slide ribbon for portmanteau
-- Custom waveforms (like LSDJ)
-- Band pass and band rejection filters

Sorry I haven't been updating survey questions lately. I got really caught up in a concept idea. Goes something like this.

The main problem or lack with software like LSDJ and LGPT is the inability of improvisation. The Square will have the portability and power of the Game Boy with the freedom of the Korg Monotron.

Maybe you get "bursts" of inspiration and you want to quickly lay down some notes on the go. Maybe you just want to show off to people that you can make "video game sounding" music. Or maybe during an event, you're feeling the beat and you want to step away from your gig setup and just start senselessly headbanging / jamming it out.

The Square will let you do all of this and more.

This is just part of the idea. I'll put up the rest later...maybe along with some concept drawings.

By trying to cater to so many things you will drown this project and overwhelm yourself. I am not saying you should make it open source, but it may be a good idea to make this thing expandable so that people can develop their own solutions to their own problems in their workflows.

You are exactly right; I should keep that in mind as I gather general ideas. Expandability goes with modularity, which I am getting peoples' opinion on here.

I can, with about 90% certainty, say that the Square will have an onboard LPF. Not too sure about the airhorn button though...

This is what I am going for and it has always been my philsophy.

2.
Do you prefer the modular or integrated approach to music production? How well could you adapt if you had to switch?

My opinion on this is that the answer should be "both."

I didn't answer the first part because I didn't want to seem to sour the results; I have a Nintendo DS and some mp3 players I purposed for live playing, but I found that since my lifestyle doesn't really allow me to play out, it is much faster to make songs on the netbook.

I think something that can reach LSDJ playability whether you have something else along with it or not is important, but something you can easily plug something else into or can rearrange operations on is important as well. If I'm not being clear enough, consider the filter input and documented solder points on Korg Monotron, the patchcord section of Arturia Microbrute, or at the most extreme, the jacks on Korg MS-10/20. You could send and receive clock syncs and note inputs/outputs, and maybe some other things that won't be obvious until you've started building. Good luck.

I definitely aim to make this oriented around live performances. We love to jam with others who share our musical interests and the audience loves to watch us. Chiptune like any other genre can give rise to pieces that can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. Obviously there are going to be times when we can't play every note. This being said, I think a sequencer is definitely a goal for this.

This one I may have already beaten to death.

2.
Do you prefer the modular or integrated approach to music production? How well could you adapt if you had to switch?

There's two kinds of playing chipmusic live:

1.  The way you play traditional instruments like a piano or guitar.  Examples would be keyboard overlays for the C64 or PixelH8's gameboy music carts.

2.  Ableton/LSDJ live sequencing where you are triggering pre-written sections of music but not playing every note.

And obviously combinations of the two.

Number 1 I'm not interested in at all.  I spent a long time in marching/concert band and garage bands and I'm done with it.  Number 2 is what I'm still learning (as opposed to press play and jump around like a dork) and is what would get my attention.  You could always accomplish that with outboard midi sequencing but I get the impression that you're looking to produce a stand-alone instrument so onboard sequencing would be a must.

I would suggest you first capture the sounds you want the synth to produce, and then do lots of interface investigations to determine how you want your instrument to be played.

^ this

You can skimp on one or overcompensate over the other but the whole of these two usually make or break any live performance. I think any successful product has to:

1. Sound amazing, or capture what sounds amazing about chipsounds
2. Inspires great artists to make great music
3. Has some sort of performance aspect that lends itself for promoting an engaging performance.

Things that look cool when people perform on them:
-Bashing a drum type thing like an ape
-Shredding a stick dynamically like its a huge musical penis at the audience
-fingering a little bowed box with sad tear inducing music

I would suggest you first capture the sounds you want the synth to produce, and then do lots of interface investigations to determine how you want your instrument to be played.

Now the part where I get uppity

You do realize this is incredibly condescending, right?  "Oh hey, you know that part of you that drives to the point that you feel you have no other choice but to end your own life?  Ignore that or no one will love you"

Everybody has dark feelings, to ignore them is denying yourself the ability to cope with them in productive ways, and if you are in a romantic relationship with someone who cannot handle the bad parts of you GET THE FUCK OUT.

That being said, no hard feelings to you in particular, SurfaceDragon, this is just a massive pet peeve of mine.

(Also, if any more discussion on this is to be had, let's do it in PM, cause this thread could be awesome and it would suck to have a mental wellness derail kill it)