How to mix your OS songs!

[The Institute]

You can get some pretty awesome synthy effects by gradually modulating the high EQ on certain instruments using markers. This is usually called a filter sweep and its best on padlike instruments.

You can't really do a real filter sweep using OS EQ, because in a real filter sweep, what is sweeping or changing is the frequency range that the EQ affects, and OS doesn't let you control that (OS EQ only lets you control volume, which technically doesn't change in a filter sweep). A filter sweep might start with a low-pass filter (letting only low frequencies through) set at 100 Hz, which is just going to let the bass frequencies through. That 100 Hz might then gradually or quickly sweep upwards to higher and higher frequencies, letting first the mids through, then the highs, then the ultra-highs, which makes the sound feel like it's opening up and getting glossier and brighter over time. There's always a resonance at the notch point in an EQ, so one narrow frequency range gets exaggerated, and when you apply a filter sweep to a normal instrument, as it passes through the mids you get that characteristic harmonic series sweep, like what you hear when you swing one of those flexible plastic tubes around, because the notes in the harmonic series are the individual tones that make up the notes produced by most tonal instruments. The only way I could think to fake that on OS would be to artificially add in those frequencies using sine tones, but I think it would be almost impossible to make that sound right.