Long time no see.

[JHXC]

Hello guys.
It has been several months since I've been in the forums, and all I can say is, holy crap things have changed. Obviously I don't know most of the people here, as this is a completely different community than what I have known from before. The sequencer has become much easier to use and more sophisticated, and I am happy the sequencer is where it is.
However, the reality of my situation is that I am growing up. I am a Senior at High School, and I am a legal adult. Due to that I have many more responsibilities and different hobbies now.
In other words, I have changed. Perhaps more than OS has.
I remember going on this site years ago now, and enjoying my time (for the most part; there were some trolls that I dealt with in the worst possible way), making music, and growing in skill to become more and more talented. OS has provided the best starting grounds for me to start, and I am glad that I have found it. I remember the old days when there were only 7 instruments, and no grid sizes, and you had a special url to get the 8 bit sounds to work. You couldn't undo. You had the old sounds. It was a very different OS at the time, and I loved it, even with all of it shortcomings.
Having said that, I have pretty much moved on from OS. I have found more powerful DAWs, bigger future prospects, other hobbies, and other things that pretty much made it pointless for me to stay on OS much longer. I feel that my charm on this site has worn off, and to stay would mean I would never be able to truly discover what I am capable of. So I have to move forward, for the sake of moving forward.
At the same time, I will take OS into heart whenever I reach further milestones in my life, as it truly meant a lot to me in my prime. I am very thankful for the impact that OS has had on me, and I hope it can do the same for you guys. Jacob_ is the man.

[LucentTear]

Welcome back JHXC, some of us thought you were going to be a disappearing legend.

But in relevance to your reintroduction as a senior member of OS, I myself also remember this site from mid 2015 where we thought the little community wouldn't have expanded as much as today. We've had a major influx of good people come on the site, but conversely we've also had a major influx of bad people as well. In either case, it never stays quiet in the chat for more than a few hours, so it depends if you want to take the increase of activity as a good or a bad thing.

Two moderators have joined the staff in recent, which includes me (promoted this February) and Crimson (promoted this October). If you want to visit the website at any point, feel free to ask us both about any questions you have concerning things like the community, or even just a general discussion about the sequencer.

Jacob_ has been noticeably active since the beginning of 2017. This is also the time where many members joined OS in exponential amounts. Since the profound activity of the site, he's been updating it frequently and has been very keen to suggestions.

d-c-s-m is still a relevant mod, he's just not on the OS Chat as much he is on the OS Discord. He still keeps tabs on the site rather often, but your best hopes of contacting him are just through Discord.

Jay2k still lives, but he hasn't been involved in the community recently.

ParaSpider finally resurrected from the grave, after being offline for merely forgetting his password. Even if we are certain about his whereabouts now, he doesn't participate in the community anymore either.

That's enough of the community overview (even though you probably don't need it, but it's good to know.)



Switching topics, OS is definitely the poor man's version of a DAW, but for whatever reason works effectively at drafting. It's because of its' user-friendliness and efficiency that I still use it today even if I have a workstation myself. In fact, even I'm hesitant about the new updates that are going to come to the website, and I'm afraid that it's going to turn the site into "just another crap music program." My charm had been lost for this site as well, but in either case I still like bullying the community here so it's not all bad haha.

This is mainly because some of the things that have been added don't work for me, so it might frustrate a lot of other people. I actually would want ?synth over the current 8-bit instruments since they're too laggy for me to ever use.

Keyboard shortcuts might have been the turnaround for this site. Literally it made composing so much more convenient in case you ever f'ed up on trying to copy notes from another sequence. Not to mention the instrument locking and highlighting as well, there are a bunch of speed techniques to navigate the sequencer with and I love it.

Interesting to hear that you had no grid-size whatsoever (assuming you can't make notes shorter or longer than 1/4). I've been raised in the era of the website where people always complained about making notes longer. Now, new people just don't understand the struggle of trying to answer that same question over and over again since they can just drag the edge these days. The inside joke of "HOW DO YOU MAKE NOTES LONGER" is just gone now. Annoying at the time, nostalgic now that I think about it.

To conclude I apologize for making your whole welcome back response into nostalgic ranting. In any case, wherever you are and whatever responsibilities you have to attend to, I wish you good luck and safety on those. Even if you have moved on professionally, please visit OS whenever you can, it's always a good thing to see pioneers on the site.

[cork]

welcome back, 'ol buddy, 'ol pal
if you didn't feel like reading that huge wall of text (that I assume is on the level of Shakespeare but I don't feel like checking) then you might as well right what I have to say
and that is this:
welcome back. we've got some new stuff and now we're planning some changes to make even more awesome changes, so you came back at the right time I guess.
that's all. don't really have much to say other than i'm glad you're back

[cork]

sorry I didn't mean "right" I meant the word "read." somehow I meant one thing and typed the other