Nov 222011
22 November 2011
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Free Chord/Lyric Display Software for Windows®
Jazz and rock musicians often play from chord and lyric sheets instead of sheet music. I wrote this simple Windows program to replace the printed chord sheets I used to use during practice, and decided to make it available for anyone else who may find it useful. Digital Fake Book displays chords and lyrics in plain text format on 1 or 2 sheets. It is not able to display standard music notation.
Main Features
- Keeps all your songs in one place for easy, one-click selection.
- Built-in metronome with tempo setting for each song.
- Chord transpose to change the key of the song.
- Audio file linking with A/B section looping helps with learning songs by ear.
- Audio files can also be transposed.
- Text size and sheet divider position is saved with each song enabling the largest text size possible while still fitting the whole song on the screen.
- Random sets can be created to make practice more varied.
- Several color schemes (themes) to choose from.
Download Version 1.9.2 (846 kB)
DigitalFakebookSetup.exe
Downloaded 244 times
License: Freeware. Digital Fake Book is copyright M. Warren. It may be distributed freely as long as no fee is charged and the author is not misrepresented. This software is distributed on an “AS IS” basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
The Digital Fake Book forum is available here if you have any questions, or want to discuss the program with other users.
Click here for a quick explanation on How to Use Digital Fake Book
Digital Fake Book Portable
A portable version of Digital Fake Book can be downloaded if you want to use the same set of data on more than one computer. This is supplied as a zip file, and needs to be extracted to the location you want to run it from. This is exactly the same program as above, but is packaged in such a way that it doesn’t need to be installed to run.
It’s important to keep the file and folder structure the same as it is in the zip as the program expects to find the various files in particular locations in relation the the program file. There is no installer to run, but you may want to download and install the Bitstream Vera font http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitstream_Vera.
The portable version is also useful if you want to run multiple versions with different configurations of song data. See the included ReadMe.txt file for more information.
Download Portable Version 1.9.2 (833 kB)
DigitalFakeBookPortable.zip
Downloaded 335 times
If you find any bugs or have any suggestions for improvements, please email me, post on The Digital Fake Book Forum or leave a comment below.
Hi Great program Mike as you know we both use it for our rare jam’s
I love this little program. It’s supremely easy to use. Adding a song is just a paste operation away, though you can import songs too. You can export songs, create songs of your own right in the program and easily change the font to suit the age of your eyes – I’m happy to have that.
There’s a metronome which is very handy. You can backup your data file, import a DFB database or easily copy a song to the clipboard. AND, there are very useful transpose functions: up or down within the program and adjustments during audio playback. Heck, there’s even provision for adding a foot switch to control either the metronome or to select a song – hardware permitting of course. How cool is that?
Hi. Just got it. LIke it but all my files are in word format, when I save them as text I lose the tabs and the chord locations are all screwed up. Other than that and the attendant moving them all back, I really like the program.
Thanks for making this available.
John
Great Concept. I am having trouble with importing my music, I have tried pasting into Dig Fake Book, saving as text document, then importing ect… it will not save the song and I have to “end task” to start all over. Any ideas? Eric
Hi Eric. I’ve not had anyone report a problem like that before. I’ve sent you an email asking for some information so we can work out what’s going wrong.