Hi,
 
Lately I've been transcribing some acoustic guitar tunes, basically by painting soft synth notes in parallel with the acoustic source clip.  When I need to check the measure I'm working on and need to hear the acoustic source track alone, I mute the soft synth MIDI track.  On many of the transcription projects, while the soft synth is indeed silent during playback, it will still sound if I click an existing note on the screen or draw a new note, despite the track being muted (I'm editing in Track View with the notes filter selected).  ???   This happens every time in some of my transcription projects and never on others.
 
I find this unexpected behavior VERY desirable and it speeds up my workflow when it happens.  Does anyone know why this happens and how to invoke this behavior on purpose?  To reiterate, the behavior I desire is a soft synth track being mute on playback, but still creating sound when notes in the Track View (with Notes filter) are clicked or drawn (with or without playback in progress).
 
I'm stumped and wish I could force this to happen on every transcription project, not just the randomly lucky ones!
 
Pete

Wouldn't you know it!  I gave up on trying to figure this out a couple of days ago, and so I posted.  Soon as I did, I stumble across something interesting while transcribing some more.  In the cases with my desired behavior, muting the MIDI track does NOT mute the softsynth audio track, while in the projects where it doesn't work, muting the MIDI track automatically mutes the softsynth audio track as well.
 
So I guess the question becomes ... what determines if the MIDI track's mute is "linked" to the softsynth's audio mute button?  And how do you "unlink" it?

Check whether Smart Mute is enabled when you right-click the Synth tab in the rack with the relevant synth selected (not in front of my DAW right now, but I think that's how you get there).
 
With Smart Mute disabled, the synth and audio output should remain active when the MIDI track is muted.
 
EDIT: It occurs to me that it's possible the behavior differs depending on whether the synth is using a Simple Instrument track or separate MIDI and Audio tracks, too.

Awesome brundlefly!  I had never played with that before!  Now I can do what I need.  Thanks! :-)

Hmmmm ... I thought I had changed the title of this thread to include "SOLVED", but it seems to have only changed the title of my last post.  How do you change the main title?

On an entirely separate note, are you aware of the program Transcribe! by seventhstring software?
Your workflow honestly seems pretty nice but I really like that program, it's cheap and very lightweight and has useful tools available for slowing down, transposing, isolation EQ, spectrum view with note guesses, etc.
Been using it for ages for learning songs and parts for cover work.

PeteL
 How do you change the main title?

Edit the initial post and modify the subject

Sanderxpander
On an entirely separate note, are you aware of the program Transcribe! by seventhstring software?
Your workflow honestly seems pretty nice but I really like that program, it's cheap and very lightweight and has useful tools available for slowing down, transposing, isolation EQ, spectrum view with note guesses, etc.
Been using it for ages for learning songs and parts for cover work.

Yeah, I looked into it, but I never bought it.  All the "slowdowner" software I've used is somewhat poor audio quality on a 50% slowdown.  The Izotope Radius algorithm that comes with Sonar is much better compared to what I've tried (I don't recall the names of the apps). 
 
All the things you mention I've been accomplishing with Sonar in conjunction Melodyne and AudioSnap, EQ'ing, though Melodyne is tedious as far as fixing it's note guesses and false notes due to harmonics.  Bright fingerstyle guitars are hard to do in Melodyne.  How does Transcribe! work for solo acoustic fingerstyle material?  Or sparsely accompanied fingerstyle?  If it really helps, I'd consider buying it.

Thanks Scook!

You can do everything you can do with Transcribe! in Sonar in some way. It's just that it's really quick and specialized. It doesn't do any actual notation or recording at all. It's just a lightweight and very quick aid for hearing (and sometimes seeing) what's going on. I think you can try it for 30 days for free. Audio quality is reasonably high quality for medium slow downs but at really slow speed obviously it suffers.