Newb Midi Controller Question

[musmin2415]

I'm apologizing in advance for this 'newb' question, but I've googled anything I could think of and I'm just not coming up with anything. Honestly, I'm probably just lacking the terminology. So here's my softball question:

I have 2 Roland keyboards that I currently use (depending on whether I'm at home, the office, or at a gig), and I'm just now exploring a little more into using them specifically as a midi controller, in conjunction with Mainstage 3. I'm currently trying to map everything within Mainstage to my old Fantom-S. Most of it has been fairly straight-forward, but my question is this: Are there only a handful of buttons / knobs able to mapped on the Fantom? For example, I easily mapped the 'RealTime Control' knobs to different fx, but I also wanted to try and map either the 'F1-F8' buttons, or even the 'Cursor' buttons to other functions within my soft synths. Is this possible? Or are only certain knobs/buttons/pads capable of being mapped? Thanks for your patience.

More rig info:
Laptop -- MBP
Keyboards -- Fantom-S, Fa-08
Interface -- Universal Audio Apollo Twin
Software -- Mainstage / Ableton Live / Pro Tools 11

EDIT: Or maybe an easier question would be -- Synths that are not specifically marketed as a 'controller', can all knobs & buttons be mapped? Or only a select few?

 

[SeaGtGruff]

Some controls will generate MIDI data and others will not. This varies greatly depending on the keyboard. Generally speaking, you won't be able to map a control (be it a button, knob, slider, etc.) unless it's designed to output a particular MIDI event-- and in some cases the specific MIDI event might vary depending on the specific function that's assigned to the control.