Do the pitch bend and modulation wheel controls (via MIDI) actually do anything with most of the synth sounds?
I've only just started tinkering with the "little brother" Garage Band program, but I was disappointed how bad support was for the pitch bend wheel from my keyboard into the supplied patches. (using pitch bend would cause secondary "note on" events which never got a "note off")
Yes, they almost always control something important. In VST/AU instruments they're often assigned to crossfade volume so that you get a natural tone colour change across the dynamic range.
I've only just started tinkering with the "little brother" Garage Band program, but I was disappointed how bad support was for the pitch bend wheel from my keyboard into the supplied patches. (using pitch bend would cause secondary "note on" events which never got a "note off")