I just found something life-changing.

Did everyone already know that some keyboards (that) have the ability to adjust cutoff freq and stuff in their settings... effectively making your keyboard, when used in conjunction with a soft synth, into a legitimate synth controller? I just discovered this about ten minutes ago on accident. I'mma use it tons in the future.

The knobs, sliders and even switches on hardware synths will more often than not send midi data in relation to activating or moving any of these controls. They are of course effecting things internally within themselves as they are supposed to. But the midi data is also often transmitted at the same time. (You may have to turn that on also in some synths, it may be default to off, I have found that in some cases)
 
It is handy and it can be used to control anything connected to it. Including your soft synths. However while a certain fader will have a certain effect on the internal sound (eg cutoff freq) it may not have that same effect in your soft synth. And this is most often due to that particular midi data not being mapped correctly within the soft synth. It will be sent from your hardware synth and received but the soft synth may have to learn what the data is and map that to the required parameter first. It may be in some cases automatically but in others you will find the soft synth may not be responding. Become familiar with the incoming midi data being mapped to parameters features in your soft synths. Those pages are also often concealed and you have to seek them out.
 
I have just invested in a rather nice ribbon controller for my Kurzweil synth and while it can do incredible things to the internal sounds it is transmitting the ribbon movements all the time too. It sends it in on odd numbered controller number though. The Kurzweil itself maps that to say pitch bend but no soft syths respond to it initially. I have to map that incoming data to the required parameter first. On the soft synth however it does not have to be pitch bend but could be filter cutoff instead allowing for some pretty expressive playing. It responds to after touch too which is pretty cool. The long ribbon can also be three smaller separate ones too making things even more interesting. A lot of data being sent then. The MixPads in a synth like Alchemy would be very controllable from your synth instead of using a mouse.

If you keep learning like this you'll discover what a scam most midi controllers are.
(Buy two keyboards, a synth and a midi controller...)

Darn- I gotta find this 'learn' function!
To address the main striking point of this article, I guess I was mostly getting at the fact that a normal performance keyboard (like my Casio WK-6500) can sometimes have odd menus allowing you to adjust parameters like those found on an actual dedicated controller or synth- they are mapped to those same controls in the DAW/soft synth, but you have to go thru a menu to access them and my keyboard only has a coupla controls for adjusting those parameters, in addition to only having A, R, and cutoff.