Yeah tracking out the MIDI is another, less destructive option to tracking out the audio. For some reason I have an aversion to MIDI and convert to audio as soon as possible… Which leads to issues when I want to change say, the velocity of a hit. 
Grouping into a rack is a nice way of getting round it, if it works. I’ll give that a go. Would be nice to have MDD_Snake in my permanent template setup with macros for controlling bits and bobs.