AKAI MPK Questions

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forums, and to be honest, new to home recording itself. I've done little things here and there with mostly just guitar and generic backing tracks. I felt it was time to move on to bigger and better things, and that's what brought me here. I bought an AKAI MPK49 not too long ago, and I'm not quite sure how to configure it to run with the X1 Essentials software. Sounds like a very broad question, yes, so let me simplify; Assuming I want to use the keyboard for the Strings preset, how would I go about that? Or using the pads in Session Drummer? I understand that helping a newbie can be frustrating, but please, bear with me. I appreciate any help that can be given. Thank you all so much.