Is the "Wizard" button checked? (at the top, toward the right). Here's a desciption from the Help - (btw, I'm not sure what version my Help file is, but my Wizard checkbox is in the upper right, not "to the right of the song title", as it says below) :

"The Wizard is a 'play along' feature that allows you to use the computer keyboard to play along with Band-in-a-Box. The neat part about the Wizard is that it ensures that whatever you play sounds good.....

....How To Turn The Wizard On/Off

Click on the checkbox to the right of the song title to turn the Wizard feature On/Off.

Or Choose Wizard Playalong feature from the Play menu.

(The Wizard is only active during playback.)

How To Play The Wizard

The Wizard Keys are active during playback. The active keys are the lower 2 rows of the keyboard."

So, Brian, I'm sure others will chime in too, but in the meantime you could do a search on "QWERTY" (which is slang for your computer keyboard) on your Help file's Search tab - it brings up quite a few results.

Bobby K.

EDIT: Darnit, Richard, you beat me to it!