Expression Pedal only acting as volume pedal is this right ?

This week I have decided to upgrade my Edirol PCR-500 with a Roland DP-2 sustain pedal and Roland EV-5 expression pedal to enhance the performances I can pull out of it whilst tracking keyboard parts. Whilst the Roland DP-2 sustain pedal acts as expected, the Roland EV-5 expression pedal only seems to act as a volume pedal for all my soft synth patches, mainly Rapture, Dimension Pro, GPO4 and Kontakt. When I record some test tracks I can see a volume automation line get recorded along with the midi data, and of course it plays back as recorded, complete with volume automation. 

Where I am confused is that I expected many soft synth patches and programs to have other parameters programmed to respond to the expression pedal. Is my expectation correct? For example LFO speed, panning control or reverb level or perhaps other parameters allowing 'expression' to the performance. 

Is it just that the connection to the MIDI controller only controls and sends CC7 (volume) data to Sonar X1 by default, and I have to program that input to control other parameters?

I just need to get a perspective on this, before spending hours fiddling with MIDI CC setups that may already be programmed in my soft synth patches and I am 'missing' something.

Garry Kiosk

From the Web:

Q: What is the difference is between MIDI volume and expression? 



A: Volume (Continuous Controller 07) and expression (Continuous Controller 11) both do the exact same thing. However they give users two different ways to deal with MIDI mixing. The standard protocol is to use MIDI volume (CC #07) to set the MIDI channel (or a phrase or segment in a sequencer) level for balancing overall volumes against other channels. A mixing console will accomplish the same thing but using CC #07 will do it in MIDI and thus lock it into the sequencer.

Expression (CC #11) can then be used for crescendos and decrescendos during the performance of the music. This way, if you need to bring the overall volume of the whole track up or down, you would use CC #07, but all the expression programming would still work just as you'd set it up to. 

Tom, Dave and Bit (Dave), Thanks for the feedback so far, very interesting and different information from each of you. I am hearing that I should change my expectation to the fact that  for expression, I should read, volume, and that I will have to play around with the programming parameters of either Sonar, or my PCR-500, if I expect my expression pedal to control anything different. 

Any more input on this subject?

Garry