How to Bind Keys to Notes? (Like Virtual Piano)

Hello, I am new to the music scene, I mostly just play on Virtual Piano http://virtualpiano.net/ where letters, numbers, and symbols represent notes with corresponding music sheets. They are mostly properly translated from the actual songs. It's super fun and when you're good on a computer keyboard you can generally be pretty good at virtual piano. Anyway I asked my music friends about how to go about setting up a kind of virtual piano in Ableton Live so I was sent here. I was told one could use samples of every note and assign keys to play them but that's super inefficient and wouldn't sound too good.

The idea here is to be able to use any keys (including capital/lowercase/symbols - very important!) on your computer keyboard as a MIDI controller (I think) with any instruments and effects to your liking. Setup exactly the same as Virtual Piano.

If not Ableton Live or Max For Live, I will accept any other DAW or program to be able to do this, just want to figure it out (as long as I can change instruments and stuff too). If you have any solid information and know of any real ways to do this please let me know, I'll do any tedious work just as long as it's viable.

And be mindful please, I am only a beginner at all of this; I hardly know my way around Ableton, so I appreciate any simple instructions. Thanks.