Top 10 things to avoid as a beginner

[LucentTear]

Agreed. Adding onto that, a good portion of OS composition seems to be visual, and this doesn't mean smashing MIDI art on the pianos. But in comparison to a notation platform, it's much easier for beginners to get an overview of the song without looking at sheet music. It's what I like about OS as a digital interface due to me not having any sort of music theory knowledge at all. Because of the layout, it's easy for me to experiment with different things and rhythmic patterns on the piano instruments alone.

In OS, the distance between notes is spatial, while in sheet music, distance has to be assumed in the type of note it is. Assuming that 70% of the sheet music you will find will be on paper, you can't automatically play the song at first to get a gist of what it sounds like. On OS, it just feels easier to make a connection between the appearance of the notes and what it actually plays.

I'm not advocating that you should never learn sheet music ever, but what I have to say above merely applies to the site.

But to make an argument here just so I can be relevant to the thread, try to play over the lines of the grid. Whether it would be slurs, psuedo-triplets and the like, going off beat can make your music sound a little more interesting. It's awkward and hard at first, but gives you plenty of options to freshen something up.