AirTurn page turner.

Rllink

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I have most all of my music on a 10" Kindle tablet and I use MobileSheets to store it all. MobileSheets is really good with PDFs. Love it. Most of my songs are one page, but not all of them. Especially the two daily ukulele books, the yellow book and the blue book as they are known as. I have been wanting a page turner so that I could go from one page to the next without stopping to swipe. Nothing fancy, but smallish. I like to travel light. I finally found the perfect one for me. Especially because it is consistent with the size of most effects pedals. This page turner is not bulky at all. About the size of a pack of cigarettes. It is an AirTurn BT200/S2. I've been using it for a few days and it is pretty basic, but that's exactly what I wanted.

page turner.jpg

I have been using the Kindle all summer and so far I'm negotiating the yellow and blue books, and the song libraries for both of my strum groups quite quickly. I've noticed that I'm finding my songs faster than a lot of people with their books. At first I was a bit apprehensive and brought both with me until I got confident with the tablet, but now I find it cumbersome to go back to the books. This page turner is just the icing on the cake.
 
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What a great idea, well done :D
Actually, I've gotten a lot of advise and guidance from people right here on UU getting it all set up and working for me. This is a great community of knowledge.
 
I'm so pleased that AirTurn have produced this pedal. Most of the others look so bulky or complicated. I'll order one for myself soon.

p.s. stuffit, I just ordered one :)
 
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I’ve been tempted to get this too. Airturn sends me emails periodically with sales, since I bought their folding mic stand, which btw is an excellent product. I use it with a tablet holder sometimes and sometimes also with a mic. I have most of my stuff on one page but might in the future want to increase the font to something these old eyes can see even better and that might push stuff on to two pages. The airturn would be perfect for that.
 
Rlink - thanks for bringing this to my attention :)

I found the link for it here: https://www.airturn.com/products/airturn-bt200s-2-controller

I've been following along the various threads here on UU about using a tablet for holding music, but the page turning aspect was something I was still iffy on.

How long does the battery last on your 10" Kindle? Enough to make it maybe 6 hrs or so?

I'd thought about getting one of these and with Amazon Prime Day coming on July 19, I am hoping for a good sale price on one, but the concern was to have enough juice to make it through all day at a uke festival without needing to charge, as well as for either a few hours at a uke jam or open mic performance. I'd figure that the latter would be no issue, but if I can go without having charge during use at a uke festival or all-day workshop that would be great as well.

I do also have a 10,000 mAh USB power bank, and I could also bring that, but it is bulky and more to carry and another device to try and rig to a music stand. I play a concert Flea, and want to try and keep the bulk down of the things I need to carry.

This Airturn pedal seems a lot smaller and easier to pack in your gear bag than the other models I've seen from them that look to have the pedals (which are more like mini gas-pedals) spaced farther apart, than this newer Airturn unit that has these typical stomp-switches that are common on effect pedal stomp boxes.
 
Rlink - thanks for bringing this to my attention :)

I found the link for it here: https://www.airturn.com/products/airturn-bt200s-2-controller

I've been following along the various threads here on UU about using a tablet for holding music, but the page turning aspect was something I was still iffy on.

How long does the battery last on your 10" Kindle? Enough to make it maybe 6 hrs or so?

I'd thought about getting one of these and with Amazon Prime Day coming on July 19, I am hoping for a good sale price on one, but the concern was to have enough juice to make it through all day at a uke festival without needing to charge, as well as for either a few hours at a uke jam or open mic performance. I'd figure that the latter would be no issue, but if I can go without having charge during use at a uke festival or all-day workshop that would be great as well.

I do also have a 10,000 mAh USB power bank, and I could also bring that, but it is bulky and more to carry and another device to try and rig to a music stand. I play a concert Flea, and want to try and keep the bulk down of the things I need to carry.

This Airturn pedal seems a lot smaller and easier to pack in your gear bag than the other models I've seen from them that look to have the pedals (which are more like mini gas-pedals) spaced farther apart, than this newer Airturn unit that has these typical stomp-switches that are common on effect pedal stomp boxes.

I'm not sure about six hours, if you mean you'd be playing from it for six solid hours, but maybe someone has tried it. I have a smaller Fire and have never put it to that long use. I have an iPad as well, and I think it might go that long, but I would bring a charger. Battery anxiety. As to the bulk issue, I think even with a power bank, you'd be carrying less weight than both Beloff books and a binder, wouldn't you? And less bulk, as well.

Amazon has a great return policy. You could get one, set it on the kitchen table with MobileSheets on for 6 hours and see how it goes. If you stick with books, though, you'll be turning your pages with your hands, like some sort of cave man :D. I want that AirTurn!

Our uke group members have noticed that when the one or two members who still use books and binders are absent, we get through a lot more songs.
 
I'm not sure about six hours, if you mean you'd be playing from it for six solid hours, but maybe someone has tried it. I have a smaller Fire and have never put it to that long use. I have an iPad as well, and I think it might go that long, but I would bring a charger. Battery anxiety. As to the bulk issue, I think even with a power bank, you'd be carrying less weight than both Beloff books and a binder, wouldn't you? And less bulk, as well.

Amazon has a great return policy. You could get one, set it on the kitchen table with MobileSheets on for 6 hours and see how it goes. If you stick with books, though, you'll be turning your pages with your hands, like some sort of cave man :D. I want that AirTurn!

Our uke group members have noticed that when the one or two members who still use books and binders are absent, we get through a lot more songs.

Thanks for your reply.

On any mobile device, I will usually put it in Airplane mode, or turn off BlueTooth and WiFi if there is no actual Airplane mode.

Also, I like to turn off auto-brightness, and manually turn it down as low as is useful. Another trick I've learned is that some apps have an "inverse mode" or "night mode" where instead of black text on a white background, it has white text on a black background, and this saves battery if done right in software, since it uses less energy for black pixels than fully lit up white pixels.

I'll see what deals are available on Prime Day, and if I can find the 10" Kindle for less than $100 USD. Also WalMart has their own tablets now under the Onn brand, and results are mixed, but on average 'decent'.

I have zero interest in getting deeply entrenched/embedded in either the Android nor Amazon ecosystem (privacy concerns) for something like this and would be only ever used for sheet music.

I have an iPhone and iPad Air 2, and use both Mac and Linux at home, so getting into Amazon's FireOS, which is based upon Android with a custom skin, means I am adding a different system, and more logins to the mix, so I have to consider if it's truly worth it.

A huge attraction for something like the 10" Kindle Fire or the Walmart Onn tablets are the price. I'd rather not have to spend over $1,000 for an iPad Pro, when 80% of it's life is going to be sitting in a drawer.

If there was an affordable Linux tablet out now, I would rather go with that, and a few are in development and expected to launch this year, for ~$200, so that is another concern, and maybe I should wait.

Anyway, sorry for going far off the topic, but yes, an AirTurn would probably make any tablet used for sheet music much better to use.

I recall a song from childhood - "Hands, feet, knees and toes, knees and toes" that with a uke in hand, and feet driving the AirTurn, maybe there are some other gadgets we should attach to ourselves on knees and toes? But it may be difficult to actually "play" our ukes if all burdened up like a digital pack animal LOL ?

Egg-shakers with knee-straps and those half-tambourines with a shoe-strap come to mind, but I'd feel silly while wearing all that and dancing around while also trying to play ukulele and sing...:p
 
Joe,

I do remember that song. A good friend here often played with all the rhythm extras you describe, I can barely coordinate singing and playing!

It sounds like you will be able to get a lot of battery life out of whatever you choose.

If you have an iPad already, I'd think buying ForScore and using that would be better than any Amazon, Android, or Linux tablet, particularly if you play with others who also use the iPad. If someone doesn't have a song, you can just airdrop it to them. And you'd save money too. I say this as someone with no horse in the OS race. I've used and own both Fire tablets and iPads, and while Fire tablets are good for certain uses--media consumption in particular--the iPad is a superior tablet, but at a seriously superior price. Since you've already paid for it, that's not an issue. I think you'll be happier using it, too. But if you want to buy a new toy, I know you won't let me stop you!

MobileSheets is seriously good software, the equal of ForScore, at least for my purposes, and naturally it has areas where it's stronger, and others where it's weaker. In combination with a 10" tablet, it's a cost effective way to go. But the iPad/forScore combo is hard to beat. For one thing, the display is better, which I do notice on music scores.

I like Linux too, and tried to make the switch on my laptop, but I am lazy and Windows is preinstalled.

Have fun deciding. If nothing else you'll end up with a nice tablet for movies.

Teri
 
Like Amazon or not, I'm pretty much married with Amazon and Kindle, so I use Kindle. I'm sure other tablets are just as good or maybe even better. But I have the Kindle, several Kindles actually. I was using an 8" Fire and it was a little too small for me. I love the AirTurn, but let me say that it works good in MobileSheets and MobileSheets works well with PDFs. If you download any books in a Kindle format instead of a PDF it does not just work, without some extra software. I get along with it very well because I work with KDP a lot, so I understand the game of twister that you have to play with them. Some might not. So just a heads up.

I don't know what the battery life on the Kindle is under the these circumstances. A long time, you're just looking at PDFs. But it probably depends. I read on it for five hours straight the other day on a train trip and it still had plenty of battery left.
 
I think you're the expert on this situation. I agree with everything you said about Kindle and the game of twister you have to play (good description, by the way). I like reading books on my 8" Fire, too. Glad to hear about the battery life.

Like Amazon or not, I'm pretty much married with Amazon and Kindle, so I use Kindle. I'm sure other tablets are just as good or maybe even better. But I have the Kindle, several Kindles actually. I was using an 8" Fire and it was a little too small for me. I love the AirTurn, but let me say that it works good in MobileSheets and MobileSheets works well with PDFs. If you download any books in a Kindle format instead of a PDF it does not just work, without some extra software. I get along with it very well because I work with KDP a lot, so I understand the game of twister that you have to play with them. Some might not. So just a heads up.

I don't know what the battery life on the Kindle is under the these circumstances. A long time, you're just looking at PDFs. But it probably depends. I read on it for five hours straight the other day on a train trip and it still had plenty of battery left.
 
I carry an external battery pack just in case my devices run down. My iPad's battery lasts longer than any event I've used it at, but I've been caught out once with it uncharged (hint: plug the same cord into the device as you plug into the charger). With the battery the iPad generally lasts entire weekend trips without having to plug in, and I can recharge the battery while using the iPad without having to make sure I'm standing near a wall socket. I use the battery at home to charge the iPad on the music stand rather than taking it to another room to charge (darn cord eating cat prevents running a charging cable where it's convenient).

For music I generally use an iPad Pro with forScore and an iRig BlueBoard that's more or less equivalent to the 4-button version of the AirTurn. The extra two buttons don't do much for me as page turning's the only thing I need while I'm actually playing. I use a third button to bring up the table of contents to find the next song, and I don't remember what the fourth is bound to. I've seen recommendations to use 3 & 4 to scroll up and down, but don't need that for the music I use.

I used a Kindle Fire 10 for a few months, but I wasn't happy with it. It's decent value for the price if you don't already have something better, but if you already have just about anything else I'd skip it. That said, it's cheap enough that you don't need to use it long before the cost/hour ratio is good, and I don't regret the cost to have something to hold me over while I waited for the new iPad to come out. I do regret that using it frustrated me. I didn't get along with the interface, I found the 16:9 screen unwieldy for my uses (it's probably good for music), and Amazon's app selection is very limited. Few of the Android apps I was interested in were available on the Fire without jailbreaking it.
I've barely touched it since getting the iPad except as a test platform, and it's based on an old enough version of Android it's not too useful for that.
 
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