Page turner experience/review

Gear
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So I wanted to figure out this Yueyinpu page turner pedal I bought yesterday on Amazon - decided to test the options and take notes incase anyone’s considering a turner. This is in no way a professional “review” just the first quick experience of a newb bassist - and therefore new to all of the platforms used outside of a basic pdf; who also doesn’t overly like tech outside of plug and play.

All in all I tried maybe 30 minutes of testing- so this isn’t super thorough testing or the best set up someone could use, You’ve been made aware :upside_down_face:

Basic setup
Turner attached via bluetooth to
Old (10+- y/o) MacBook Air that had

  • USB to cheap tv monitor where tab was pinned.
  • 1/8” audio out to fender rumble 15
    Audio from fender rumble to audio technica headphones.

Song and tab:
Another brick the wall pt.2 - Pink Floyd
using full screen mode and Apple Music player displayed on the mac

Systems tested
Apple Music
Ultimate Guitar Basic user tab
Ultimate Guitar “Pro” tab
BassBuzz 50 first songs site (noteflight)
PDF

That sounds more complicated than needed… moving on:

Apple Music
For fun tried to control start/stop:
Works fine, but as functions aren’t assignable cursor must be left on the play button and “clicked” like a mouse. Stop/start but no return if need to start over.

Ultimate Guitar (basic)
Easily scrolled the page - hard to determine actual functionality as the tab was horrid and unorganized… but that’s a different topic all together

Ultimate Guitar (Pro)
Scroll is jumpy and, for me, too easy to get lost

BassBuzz 50 first songs site (noteflight)
Flow & Strip views didn’t function for me

In perform view had to leave cursor on the “next arrow” and mouse click to next sheet,
Again as not assignable only could move forward and not back ward

Page view
Scroll was slow - 3-5 clicks to hit the next Set of measures below.
:partying_face:Switched the repeat mode on and was smooth scrolling (think mouse wheel)

:partying_face:Pdf
works as a “sharp” page turn ie- not able to view upcoming bars on next sheet

All in all it does the basics of what I need it to with my current setup, and likely sticking to the 50 songs, for now. It’s very basic, as expected for the lowest price multi function pedal I saw; $50 all in w/same day shipping.

Also, I’m sure, there are much better ways to set this up using various reader apps etc, etc, to improve functionality… I’d rather try to learn a new song or improve technique then go down that road.
Assignable keys is definitely the better option imo

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I have the same page turner for use on my ipad mini. I only use Ultimate Guitar when I need tabs and this foot pedal will only operate to scroll down or up on the Bass tabs only and not on the Pro tabs. Even getting to that stage was a struggle. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for!!

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Well I have to disagree strongly.

I purchased this page turner last fall and paired it with the software Mobile Sheets Pro.

I play in two to three jams a week and since purchasing this page turner and the Mobile Sheets Pro app I have more than got my money back for the turner and app just from the savings of printing out lead sheets alone.

I think the software you use with the page turner makes a big difference to how useful you think this may be. Check out this link.

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@celticstar you’re actually agreeing with me :joy:. I was referring to my set up and testing not being thorough or deeply looked into

I appreciate the link! If I do decide to go further down the rabbit hole I’ll check it out for sure.

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Sorry about that misunderstanding.

I have all of my songs in one collection.
From that overall collection I pull the songs for the individual jams I play with and store them as their own set for that group. The original songs still stay in the overall group.

I never use the auto scroll function but it is there if needed.
The other thing of note on that particular turner is the fantastic battery life.

There are a few other members here on the forum using that same turner.

I will admit there is a bit of a learning curve with the app but I find it worthwhile and as I said previously the money I have saved just on toner and paper has more than covered the cost of the page turner and app. :+1:

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No worries at all!

That sounds perfect! I’m nowhere near that point in my skill level yet… but that will be awesome when I get there.

And absolutely re: paper and toner costs; that was my major reason for the purchase… that and not wanting to be flailing my bass around while searching for my spot, while butchering a song :notes: :grin:

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You’ll get there.
All it takes is practice.
Unfortunately you need lots of it. :smile:

Where are you in Ontario?

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:100:% truth lol.

I’m in London, you?

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Barrie

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I’m impressed in the coordination needed to scroll ahead with your foot while also playing.

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I am using a Samsung Tab A8 to display each page individually.

I tap out the beat constantly with my left foot and only use the right foot to change pages when there are more than one page in a song. The app I use has an auto scroll function but I do not use it.

Not that difficult really :+1:

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Personally, I’m only using the turner after I’ve 80%+ learned the entire song, so tab is for reference to the sequence structure only really. Similar to what @Celticstar mentioned, using a full page view, I’ve found it’s usually only 1-3 taps max per song.

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Great review @JesCbuzzin…

Although I use a Donner page turner, what I find more useful is the app being used to store/hold all the music. I have used the forScore app for a couple years now since it allows me to create, save, modify numerous set lists… Came in really handy when I found myself playing with a couple different groups… I use it on a daily basis to go through a lot of the songs that I like to stay practiced up on…

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Keep on Thumpin’!
Lanny

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Appreciate this @Lanny, App and tablet definitely seems the way to go!

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The forScore app sounds similar to the Mobile Sheets Pro app.

Funny you mentioned usage with different groups.
Last Wednesday night I was playing with a group of 12 people and a request for City of New Orleans came up. I punched it up and when we started playing it sounded terrible.

Problem was this group always played it in C and some new people in the group were trying to play it in G. After 5 more minutes of paper shuffling and people searching through their binders for the song in C we finally did it. At least my fingers got a 5 minute rest. Funny thing is when I looked at the complete song list library I also had the song in G so it made no difference to me really which key they wanted to play in.

The page turner and app are one of those low cost items I should have gotten years ago. Such a time saver. Oh well live and learn :+1: :+1: :+1:

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