Thanks again for the response.
Great concept and I’m sure that it would work with normal instruments. However, an external instrument track seems not to act like a regular track. First of all, the M and S buttons are not active on an external instrument track in the project window. This means that muting or soloing has to be done using the buttons in the mix console. There I can alt-command-click the solo button and set it to solo defeat. (making it an orange button) But that track still mutes when soloing another track. The mute button in the mix console does not show that it’s muted, (no yellow coloring) but the Ext instrument track is muted nonetheless. Is this a feature or a bug? Since the Ext Instrument doesn’t work like any of the other types of tracks, it might be a bug. Either way, good thinking and a very logical approach to my problem.
So thanks much!
-mike