When it comes to mixing, a lot of engineers will tell you there’s nothing quite like a good piece of hardware with real faders. Some synthesizers nclude faders for real-time control over the sound you’re playing, however you may be able to program these to control the faders in a recording program’s mixer. Several keyboards, such as Nektar’s Panorama series or M-Audio’s Advance controllers, have templates you can load so all the various hardware controls (which may also include rotary controls and switches) are pre-mapped to useful functions in various pieces of software.
Or, your program may have a MIDI Learn function that makes it easy to map controls to mixer functions. Either way, you’ll find that being able to move a physical fader can be a lot more fun, and improve workflow, compared to constantly clicking and dragging on a screen.