[maxmsp] Please Point me in the Right Direction

I've been using Live to play notes into Max to trigger various combinations of oscillators I'm experimenting with. I would like to  be able to give each note I play a note off message so it doesn't keep playing. In the future I would also like to be able to play directly into Max without going through another app.

Could anyone just point me to which tutorials and perhaps even object help files that I should study in order to learn to accomplish this?

This isn't for school, although I am a music student, but I know people around here don't like it when a person just asks how to do something. That's not what I want, just a quick roadmap of where to look.

Thanks!