Laptop Keyboard

At times I just like to doodle about using just the laptop keyboard as my input. To get it to work I have to first “press” a key/note on the virtual scaler keyboard with the mouse (is this a bug?) This enables the keyboard on the laptop (A to L + Q to P). This enables it momentarily. If I do some other operation,(ie choose a different motion) then I have to go through the mouse press operation again to enable it

Furthermore, the laptop plays very high (C4 upwards) , How do I get it to play further down the virtual keyboard/octave ?

Thanks for your time and patience