Mix and edit groups are a crucial part of managing a Pro Tools session and the bigger the session the more important groups become. As sessions grow and evolve it usually becomes necessary to modify the contents of a group. To do this you probably know that by clicking on the disclosure triangle at the top right of the Groups list a list of options is displayed, one of which is Modify Groups.

Most people know that from here you can use the add and remove buttons to populate or depopulate your group, but have you ever paid any attention to the two buttons underneath - Add and Replace? Using these two buttons you can modify and update your Group’s contents using tracks selections. Just select the tracks you want from the Mix or edit pages by clicking on the track names. Make contiguous selections by Shift-clicking so every track between the previously selected and newly selected tracks are selected and by Command clicking (or using Control on a PC) you can add or remove non-contiguous selections.

In the example above I’ve selected Chorus Triples 1&2 in the mix window and from the Modify Groups window I can either add them to the current BVs group or replace the contents of the BVs groups with thos two new tracks.

Above you can see the result of updating the Group using Add.

And above you can see the result of updating the Group using replace. Handy!