Attempting to adjust the volume has led to error messages
What kind of error messages? It would be new to me that OpenMPT has any error messages related to muting instruments. So I'd be curious to see this error message you encountered.
There are several ways to achieve what you want depending on the file format and type of instrument.
- If it's just temporary, you can
mute instruments from the tree view. The mute status is not saved in files.
- You can set an instrument's or sample's global volume to 0. Note that this only applies to sampled instruments. If you are using instrument plugins (VSTi), you can instead choose "Bypass" in the plugin settings.
- If your instruments are organized into separate channels, you can mute those channels instead of muting instruments. Channel mute status is saved in the S3M, IT and MPTM formats; in MOD and XM it will not be retained when the file is closed.
- Alternatively you can set the channel volume to 0 in S3M, IT and MPTM formats.