Managing/Navigating Groups for Solo/Muting

[Scott Kendrick]

I understand how groups work - adding controls (like mute, solo buttons) to a group, and then selecting one item in the group to control all the others. This drives a lot of creative muting and soloing combinations to try to achieve what I'm doing. But I'm wondering if theres a feature or a workflow that anyone has found for easily soloing and muting either groups of tracks or groups of busses, and in some cases there is overlap between those groups (I feel like I've seen this in other DAWs). Example of what I mean... would be nice if there's a interface that lists all your named groups that you select solo or mute from, without having to scroll through console view.. and my groups my look something like this:

[ S ] [ M ] Rhythm section  << would include all my Bass and Drum tracks (or Busses)

[ S ] [ M ] Instrumental  << everything but vocals

[ S ] [ M ] Guitar and Bass  << like it says

If any ideas/work arounds/features I haven't found, much appreciated.

Scott

Edited December 27, 2022 by Scott Kendrick

[msmcleod]

There's a few ways I can think of doing this:

1.  Create additional buses, one for each of the groups you've listed. The buses would normally be muted, but if you wanted to solo a particular set of instruments, you'd just exclusive solo that bus;  or

2.  Use the Track Manager to create presets to show only the tracks in your groups.  Once switching to a preset, you can then select all, quick-group mute/solo them, then go back to the Track Manager to unhide the other tracks.

3.   Use Mix Recall to switch between different mixes with various groups of tracks muted and/or solo'd.  For this, you probably want your Mix Recall settings are set to only include solo/mute.

4.   Use Track Folders / Sub-Folders - mute/soloing the folder will mute/solo all the tracks within it.  Clever arrangement of the folders might get you close to what you want.
 

[Scott Kendrick]

Thanks - I'll give some of these a try. Assuming for the busses (option 1) - I just put sends on existing busses to those? Uncertain 4 would work because a track can only live in one folder. I do keep all my instruments in folders (e.g. drums, guitars, bass, vocals, keys). Haven't played with Mix Recall.. will investigate.

Could be a good feature improvement thought to have a little dialog like the one I proposed.