After a long wait, I was recently informed that I took second place in the contest! I'm elated to know that someone else enjoyed the finished product.

To conclude my project log, I've written a couple questions for myself for debriefing purposes:

Where did I get stuck? Why?

I was at first stuck on what to make out of the materials given to me. This is definitely the product of my inexperience in electronics, as the project was a blind leap into hacking a pre-existing piece of hardware, and in tone generation through code.

Secondly, once I had an idea of what was possible given the hardware I was given, generating appropriate code for the Trinket threw me for a loop. I had very basic familiarity with the Arduino IDE, and should have done more investigation into micro controllers before I jumped and bought a Trinket. It may have been more appropriate for a first project to build an Atarti Punk Console or some such tone generator that didn't rely on a micro controller. I've since visited the APC as a project to establish more of a foundation in analogue synthesis & tone generation.

If presented with the a similar project/similar parameters in the future, how would I approach it differently?

Before I start buying parts, I need to have a better idea of what I'm going to end up making. I started with a nebulous goal, and experienced a prolonged and frustrating prototyping process. Before I start writing code, I need an outline of what I'd like to achieve, and check that my objectives are obtainable with the hardware I'm using. I didn't have a clue as to what materials I needed, or what the objective of my code was, so for a large part of the process, I was resigned to partially satisfactory prototypes, an abundance of erroneous material, and general confusion.

Now that I have one project under my belt, I plan on getting things working hypothetically on paper before I take a plunge into purchasing. More research next time. Overall, I'm satisfied with the difficult process, I learned a great deal because of it.