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Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

engadget.com

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Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#81

Post by matheusmoreira »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #74
titzer wrote: post #42

About 20 years ago I bought my first digital guitar tuner, a Korg, that is about the size of a deck of cards. It had a monochrome LCD screen that mimicked an analog dial with a needle that moved to indicate flat or sharp. Years passed. Guitar tuning apps became a thing. I downloaded a few over the years. Then the one (free) one I had started showing ads. Little by little, update by update, the ads became more annoyin…

You are dissing a product that you didn't pay money for, and comparing it unfavorably to one that you did. How is that fair. There are metronome and tuner apps that are way more pleasant and functional than any hardware product, if you could shell out just a few bucks (< $10). You also have fewer batteries to manage.

> How is that fair.

They chose not to charge money for it. They chose to ruin it with annoying ads nobody wants to see. It is absolutely fair.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#82

Post by lucas_membrane »

anitil wrote: post #56
titzer wrote: post #42

About 20 years ago I bought my first digital guitar tuner, a Korg, that is about the size of a deck of cards. It had a monochrome LCD screen that mimicked an analog dial with a needle that moved to indicate flat or sharp. Years passed. Guitar tuning apps became a thing. I downloaded a few over the years. Then the one (free) one I had started showing ads. Little by little, update by update, the ads became more annoyin…

As a non-guitarist but one-time musician, why are guitar tuners needed? Other stringed instruments seem to not need them, and I never thought to ask. (Obviously you might need an absolute reference if you don't have absolute pitch)

Orchestras tune up to the concert master, usually one of the violinists. So everyone gets to tune one of their strings to the pitch of the one string of the concert master. Almost all of the strings in an orchestra (excepting things like guitar, banjo, lute, sitar) have 4 strings (violin family), with the frequency intervals (ratio of frequencies) between adjacent strings being usually a perfect fifth, or perfect fourth (e.g. string bases) which is the inverse ratio to that of a perfect fifth.

So if I have a violin in my mitt, and I tune my A string to an A from the lead violinist, to put my instrument into tune, I must get the E string to be a perfect fifth above the A, the D string to be a perfect fifth below the A, and the G string to be a perfect fifth below the D. The perfect fifth relationship has the higher string vibrating three times for each two times the lower string vibrates, plus a tiny adjustment to get the frequency ratios of the twelve half-steps in an octave all equal. The adjustment is very small (about 0.11%), you could tune a violin with the fifths all exactly 3 to 2 so that, e.g., the google tuner could still show all four strings as in tune. And the 3 to 2 ratio is about the easiest interval less than an octave to do by ear. So most violinists, cellists, etc with good ears do fine without tuners.

The guitar has an interval of a major third between the G and B strings. The integer ratio of frequencies for this interval is usually given as 5 / 4, but the adjustment to even out the steps in the octave is larger, about 0.79%, and you cannot tune the other notes on a guitar at showtime by moving the frets around, so tuning the guitar (and other fretted instruments) is more like tuning a piano than tuning a violin or cello.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#85

Post by harry8 »

iamevn wrote: post #80
harry8 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. People would rather spend a day per week working on google's stuff than their own project?

Projects aren't typically scheduled to account for it in my experience. If I took that much time to work on something that's not an OKR then I'd just be falling behind.

So you totally can work on your own project for 20% of your time but you won't get 20% of your time to work on your project. Right.

So the policy is dead with only a dishonest echo remaining..? Doesn't even qualify as evil anymore on google's standards, but when google hired freelance recruiters were ringing me several times a week it really would have. Those were the days, we used to think microsoft were horrible. And they were!

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#86

Post by amelius »

How is this not abuse of power to get into the guitar tuner market? I hope they get sued by the tuner companies.

And before you respond, think how you would feel if your service was "front-run" by Google upon a user search.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#87

Post by pbhjpbhj »

amelius wrote: post #86

How is this not abuse of power to get into the guitar tuner market? I hope they get sued by the tuner companies. And before you respond, think how you would feel if your service was "front-run" by Google upon a user search.

So Google can't do anything that's not a complete innovation?

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#88

Post by sriram_malhar »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #81
sriram_malhar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are dissing a product that you didn't pay money for, and comparing it unfavorably to one that you did. How is that fair. There are metronome and tuner apps that are way more pleasant and functional than any hardware product, if you could shell out just a few bucks (< $10). You also have fewer batteries to manage.

> How is that fair. They chose not to charge money for it. They chose to ruin it with annoying ads nobody wants to see. It is absolutely fair.

OP is dissing one app, but making a generalised comment on all software apps in the tuner/metronome category.

There is no shortage of well done apps that cost very little (most of them cheaper than the cheapest korg tuner) and packing in way more functionality. If OP's comment was something to the tune (heh) of "I tried a bunch of paid top-rated apps and I prefer my hardware tuner", I'd consider it a fair comparison.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#89

Post by lucas_membrane »

omnicognate wrote: post #76
omnicognate wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very interesting. The tuning for a violin is always (afaik) to make the open strings a perfect 3/2 fifth apart, but then of course you can play to whatever tuning you want. (If you have the skill to do that - I certainly don't!) That makes tuning a guitar a much more complex thing in principle, with choices and trade-offs to be made, so maybe that's a better explanation for the prevalence of tuners.

I say "always" (for the violin), but that has problems itself. Eg. If you're playing with an equal temperament (eg piano) accompaniment your open G will not match it and there's no other way to play that note. Presumably advanced violinists have to choose their own tradeoffs, but I was always taught to hear the fifth and would always be aiming for a just fifth (tuning an equal tempered fifth by ear would be a neat tr…

> presumably the frets are equal-temperament semitones apart

Guitars are made of wood, which bends (both the neck and the top) as one adjusts the tension of the strings. As the neck bends, the length of the string between the bridge and nut changes, and the height of the strings above the fingerboard varies in quite a complex way along the neck, changing the amount of tension added by pushing the string down to hold it against the fret. Similar changes in frequency occur as frets and fretboard wear down a little, increasing the distance needed to properly fret a string.

The neck and top will warp and bend with age, with changes in temperature and humidity. And after a guitar has been played a while, it will have been worked over by one or more guitar technicians. There are so many variables that nothing can be taken for granted. Using accurate electronic tuners is presumably the simplest and fastest way for guitarists to maintain respectable pitch in most musical presentations.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#90

Post by makeitdouble »

Kiro wrote: post #83

Clicking this thread I thought "at least this is something HN can't bash Google for" but of course I was wrong. You guys are really creative in your hate.

Google has a long history of:

- getting into fields to offer a free product then discontinuing it

- integrating random apps and services into its search and blocking more that half of search results pages with its own content.

This seems to come straight into the second category.

I mean, according to the article it was its own property on the side, living its life. You could eventually summon from the assistant if you wanted to, but they still had to bring it as a widget into the main search engine. Why.

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