For some years I've been thinking it would be nice to have a fake book in a laptop computer or some such device. Is there such a thing? I know that some keyboards show the lyrics in a display. But, I'm talking about standard fake book style i.e. melody notation, chord symbols, and lyrics.

Great idea. I have wondered the same thing for some time now. I must have every fake bood ever written. I usually just play each song I want and save it on the keyboard. I have an SK760 (General Music).

I've been working on one for some time now, but it's not ready yet. It's a LOT of work, but I have most of the songs on computer and I'm experimenting with formats now. I'm certainly tired of lugging around a crate of fake books.
Don

Don and I discussed this a few years ago. Since that time HD prices have fallen and the drives have gotten much bigger. It is certainly now feasible to scan the pages of all your fake books (why bother creating digital copies of the music; e.g., cakewalk) and save them. With the 6 or 8 gig capacity of the PSR-9000 HD it would be nice if you could store them there and somehow use the video output to put a scanned page up on a TV set for viewing (you could freeze the TV picture with "freeze frame" that some sets have) while you switched the synth back to other musical HD functions. But all that is quite complex. Easiest to just do the scans and put them into a notebook computer.
Bob

One of the reasons I bought the Solton X1 was for the song text display. While it worked pretty well, it proved to be not practical for me for several reasons.
I liked to have information available on the screen other than the lyrics. The lyrics had to be "married" to a style, or song, or setup, and it quickly became very complicated to store and recall everything. The X1 format called for standard text file, which was o.k., but most of the lyrics I had were in a word processor, and I had to convert everything to standard text file, then set up a memory for each song, or go to the hard drive and call up just the lyrics. And, you had to scroll the lyrics either by hand or footswitch. The X1 kept both my feet and both hands busy as it was because the fill and variation buttons were on the wrong side (at least for me).
I quickly decided the notebook computer was a better way to go. Then if you change keyboards (as most of you know I am very prone to do) you still have the "fake book". I'm so glad I didn't invest the countless hours that would have been needed to set up the X1, because now I'm back to Yamaha.
I am probably still a few months away from having an operation I can live with.
In addition to the standard fake books, I have the words and chord changes to every song I have ever learned. And I started doing this in 1962. A lot of them are still typewritten, as I didn't get a computer until 1990. I'm slowly getting them converted to word processor. Unfortunately many of them are not in good enough condition to scan with much success.
Don

If you start from a Midi file, then using a laptop with a sequencer or a notation program should be able to simulate a fake book.

Some of the sequencer programs can even show the note to be played in real time (don't know whether you want that), while notation programs generally cannot follow in exact real time.

Cubase can even generate the chord symbols automatically.

Hope this helps (or perhaps you are doing it this way already).

Don, on the scanning idea, if you play with a program like Photoshop (the sort of thing used to take the red eye out of pictures) you can dramatically effect the scanned quality of even a very old and faded piece of music. You can darken the notes without darkening the background, sharpen the image etc. I recently put some front teeth back on my daughter's class photo! It's quite easy and fast. Much faster than redoing the song manually on a sequencer.

Just about the time you think Uncle Dave has gotten senile, HE'S BACK.
I will try Photoshop. One of my kids has a cavity--maybe I can fix it.
Seriously, the songs I am most interested in getting on the laptop are the ones I have typed myself over the years. They are strickly lyrics and chord changes. I don't use very many midi files. I prefer to play the songs with the appropriate style, so I can make my mistakes Live.
I am looking for a used laptop, but don't know much about them. What size and type display would be good enough? It won't require a huge hard drive, and the processor speed wouldn't even be that important for lyric files. I suppose if you wanted to load it with midi files, a newer one would be better though.
Thanks for all the input.
Don

I am considering the new Wrist watch computer Uncle Dave will probally market. You speak into the built in mic[ name a song ] and the data is passed through your arms to your fingers, and you play the song correctly...The proto type should be available this millenium[remember that word,everyone was using all winter]...Actually I agree with Uncle Dave about the Laptop. I use a similar model...Fran

Just a small note about using a sequencer as a fake book: You don't need to use the midi file for anything else than for showing the notes, chords and the lyrics. Just synchronise the sequencer to your keyboard's midi clock, if you want the sequencer to follow your playing. You don't need to connect the midi output of the laptop to the midi input of your keyboard. This way you can play the keyboard the way you like (and make as many mistakes you like ;-).

If you don't want the sequencer to follow, then you don't need any midi connections, but you need to change the pages yourself (and probably also scroll the screen yourself).

And of course you can record the tune in advance by youself using the sequencer. In this case you probably don't want to have too many mistakes in the file. Luckily it is easy to make small corrections with a sequencer. So you don't need to have a commercial/downloaded midifile. You can make it yourself, if you prefer that.

And finally, if you only need the lyrics and the chords, then you can use the sequencer of your keyboard to show them while you are playing, provided it supports lyrics and chord display. Just mute all the tracks or remove all the notes from the midifile, if you don't want it to play. However, not all keyboards support using the sequencer and the auto accompaniment at the same time.

Kari