Questions & Answers

Toggle Solo and Mute back and forth on selected tracks

+4 votes
2,074 views
asked Jun 9, 2023 in Mixing by mikesupina (6,560 points)
I think this would be very helpful! :) Right now, I have my keyboard shortcut set to SHIFT + S for Solo or SHIFT + M for Mute. Sometimes if I'm tracking guitars with two different mics per sound, if I want to A/B guitar 1 vs guitar 2 on the fly, there is no fast way to toggle between the 4 channels back and forth; two at a time in Studio One. This can be done in Pro Tools where you for example, solo both tracks of guitar 1, then select all four channels of guitar 1 and guitar 2, then hit SHIFT + S, and it will now toggle back and forth between both sounds on the fly. This can be done with Mute as well. This is super handy not only for that purpose, but auditioning different sounds during a mix as well where you want to mute and unmute a handful of tracks back and forth, toggling them in real time.

1 Answer

0 votes
answered Jul 2, 2023 by soupiraille (1,500 points)
You can easily do that already: mute guitar tracks 3/4 and leave guitar tracks 1/2 neither soloed nor muted; then just select guitar tracks 3/4 and press ‘S’ successively: it will toggle between guitar 1/2 and guitar 3/4.

You can also play with the global solo or mute too (Cmd+Shift+M/S).

If you want to listen to other tracks while doing that — for example you always want your drums to play while switching guitars back and forth — a better way of doing that is to mute events: mute events of guitar 3/4 (by default: Shift+M), then select all events from guitar 1/2/3/4 and press Shift+M alternatively: it will switch back and forth between guitar 1/2 and 3/4, while still listening to the drums/other tracks.

Once you’ve done it a couple of times, it will become a second nature, you won’t think about it anymore.
...