Grouping tracks that go together
When I’m working on a production or a mix and have a situation in which the relationship between two tracks is important, I put them in their own little group, so that they are locked together and respond in tandem to volume / mute / editing.
For example, maybe I have two synthesizer tracks that are working together to create the synth bass sound. I would lock that relationship in place, so that if I adjust the volume on one of the two tracks it makes that same volume adjustment on the other track. This way I won’t accidentally change the bass sound by going to adjust the volume, forgetting to adjust both tracks equally, and disrupting the balance between the two sounds.
Or maybe I have a left and right doubled rhythm guitar, and I’ve found the relative balance between them that works for the song. I would lock that in too.
Or maybe it’s a bunch of backing vocal tracks that work together to form a single part — a multitracked gang vocal, or a multipart harmony. I would lock in that relationship also.
If I have tracks grouped together and I do want to adjust just one of the tracks independently of its groupmate(s) — maybe one of the two synth bass layers needs to be a touch more prominent — I can just hit the modifier key on my keyboard before I adjust the fader, to temporarily suspend grouping while I make the move(s) I need to make. In Pro Tools this modifier is the ctrl key; your DAW might be different.
In Pro Tools, you can right-click on any group and choose which behaviors are grouped and which aren’t. For example, I might group all the tracks in the drum kit together, so that I can solo or mute the entire kit by clicking the solo or mute for any of the constituent tracks. But I might uncheck the box for volume, so that I can move each drum’s volume fader independently of the others.
And if I need to do some extended independent work on a group’s constituent tracks, I will bypass group operations, do the work, and then re-enable group operations.
Everyone hold hands — jamie