While offering suggestions in a thread on folders
I realized that Tracks can be hidden or shown based on their Track Color Name.
At first this might seem “that’s nice (yawn)” but actually it creates a mechanism to build very complex ways to select Tracks because it is based on the Color’s Name not the actual Color.
First in Project/Project Colors Setup - Options make sure to check the box “Select Colors by name”
On the Color Set tab, Cubase by default names the colors something along the lines of Color 1, Color 2, etc. (been awhile since I’ve seen it). But you can change these names to whatever makes sense to you. And you can use those names as tags to facilitate Track selection. In the attached PLE preset you can see I have 5 colors associated with Guitars+misc. When the preset is run it will toggle between showing & hiding any Tracks with any of those colors.
I used Toggle but you could also use On/Off and use pairs of Presets for on and off. I built a bunch of these for different groupings like Vocals, Drums, Keys/Synths, etc. and just that has been a really great change. Especially used in conjunction with Metagrid where I can have dedicated buttons to show/hide Vocals or Guitars. To a large extent it kind of kills off a lot of the need to scroll up & down thru the Track List.
As if that isn’t enough, wait there’s more.
Since multiple PLE Presets can select the same Color Name you could for example create a Preset called “Solos” that grouped together the ‘Colors’ Guitar Lead, Synth Lead, and Horn Solos. Now the “Guitar Lead” Track will show up with both the Guitars and the Solos presets.
This is basically co-opting the Color Names to use as tags, but it is independent of the actual colors used to visually ID Tracks. So if your Violins were green and the Violas blue you might create a bunch of different Color Names indicating articulations but they all are using the same visual color. So all the Viola Tracks look the same even when using different ‘colors’. This lets you see only the Violins or only the Legato Tracks across the string section.
