MIDI Mute behaviour

I suppose I’m being lazy by asking, but am I imagining things, or before 7.5.x, if I muted a MIDI track routed to a VST instrument, could I still play notes on a controller and they would be played on the instrument, but it would just mute the already recorded parts?

i.e. record MIDI part, hit mute on track, recorded parts do not play back but I can still play the VST?