Track Groups

A group is a folder of tracks that is also a bus. Everything inside is summed into one channel, so one fader, one pan, and one FX chain control a whole section.

What a group is

A group does two jobs at once.

• It is a folder: its member tracks sit together under one header, and collapse away with it.
• It is a bus: every track inside is summed into one channel. The sum runs through the group's FX chain, then its fader.

That makes groups the way to mix sections. Put four violin tracks in a STRINGS group and one knob pulls the whole section down. One reverb on the group wraps them all in the same room.

How to create a group

Two ways:

• Click NEW TRACK and choose Group. An empty group appears at the top. Drag tracks into it.
• Select several tracks first, then right-click one of them and choose Group Selection. The selected tracks fold into a new group in one step. Selecting multiple tracks is covered in Tracks.

Adding and removing tracks

Drag a track's header until it sits under the group header, then drop it. The gap between rows shows where it will land. Members sit together, directly under their group.

To take a track out, drag it back out of the group: above the group header, or below the last member.

Group volume, pan, mute and solo

The group header carries the bus controls. They act on everything inside.

• M mutes every member at once.
• S solos the whole group.
• The volume knob is the bus fader: the members' sum passes through it.
• The pan knob pans the summed signal.

Right-click either knob to reset it. The same right-click can also create an automation channel for the knob, so the group fader can ride over time. See Automation.

Group FX

The FX chip on the group header opens the group's effect chain. Effects here process all member tracks at once, as one signal.

That is the place for shared treatments: one reverb for the drums, one compressor gluing the backing vocals. See Effects & FX Chains.

Collapsing a group

Click the chevron on the group header, or its color bar, to collapse the group. The member rows hide, and the group takes one slim row.

The group's own timeline row always shows a merged picture of everything inside: blocks where the members have material, with their notes and waveforms sketched in. Drag a block there to move the members' clips together in time.

Color, rename and delete

Click the group's name to rename it. Right-click the header and choose Group Color to recolor it from the palette; Kind Default returns it to the groups' default color.

To dissolve a group, right-click its header and choose Delete Group (keep tracks). The member tracks stay in the project, just ungrouped.