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Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

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Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#41

Post by YZF »

asdff wrote: post #35
lucas_membrane wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With on-line music sessions now spanning the globe, and only a small minority of people able to achieve perfect absolute pitch, standard pitch is the lingua franca of internet music, and should be widely useful.

What is standard pitch?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard)

Most people that tune by ear tune relatively, e.g. they tune each string to another string. If there's no standard reference then it'll sound fine but you can't play with anyone else who is tuned to the standard... Though many people can tune to a reference pitch as well without using a tuner.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#42

Post by titzer »

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 annoying, until one day it forced me to watch a 30 second ad before tuning my guitar. The one thing that I enjoyed to get away from computers and their....bother.

That day I went out and bought 4...FOUR snark clip on tuners, and another Korg. I deleted that stupid app and have not looked back.

I don't want to go back to sucky software apps replacing fully functional, well-designed single-purpose devices. There's just too much pull to make them into g****mn ad platforms.

Google search also has a crappy metronome. It sucks. I use my analog metronome all the time.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#43

Post by dnissley »

tarunm wrote: post #19

Isn't this another blatant case of Google abusing its position of being the gate-keeper of internet and pushing its feature above the websites that exists with the same feature for years? Same as it has been doing for things like online calculators, weather sites, currency conversions and so on. Worse is that they don't have to really play by the rules of SEO. Any other website with tuners or weather forecasts have t…

Not a downvoter, but I find this line of argument to be very poorly thought out.

Why shouldn't google be able to paste ads for its products on certain searches? Why shouldn't amazon be able to do the same with product searches? Why shouldn't apple be able to build feature X into the OS that's currently a category of app? It's literally their product!

We can't possibly have a conversation about "regulating algorithms" like google search until there are reasonable proposals about how to do so, and I've seen exactly zero -- so until then I feel I have to assume that people making this argument just want google to just stop changing, which is a death sentence in the age of the internet.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#45

Post by tarunm »

asdff wrote: post #38
harry8 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument right now would likely be that it doesn't show up in the google search for "guitar tuner" and needs "google guitar tuner" to be found coupled with an assumption that this is how it will always be. It's a fair enough argument. But they should make it in response not just downvote like so many google employees not wishing to engage with a discussion about abuse of market power at all. I think I tend more t…

OP does have a point but I think a better example is when google scrapes a truncated paragraph from a website and presents that.

Agree, I take back the specific example of tuner since it doesn't show up searching only for guitar tuner or such terms. But I still stand by other snippets.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#46

Post by tarunm »

Agentlien wrote: post #28
tarunm wrote: post #19

Isn't this another blatant case of Google abusing its position of being the gate-keeper of internet and pushing its feature above the websites that exists with the same feature for years? Same as it has been doing for things like online calculators, weather sites, currency conversions and so on. Worse is that they don't have to really play by the rules of SEO. Any other website with tuners or weather forecasts have t…

I didn't downvote but I do disagree. I see this argument often, but in practice the Google widgets tend to be well implemented and allow me to get the information I want even quicker. That's exactly the purpose of a search engine. It makes me a satisfied user. I really don't have a problem with them denying traffic to other sites by providing users with information directly.

Agree that they are well implemented from user point of view, I use them all the time. What I do not like is that they do not have to compete with others, especially when it comes to search results. I didn't follow it in details but I believe they did get in trouble with Froogle in EU[0] for similar reasons. I guess in that case they were against big businesses who were able to fight it out but for snippets it's against hobbyist and small time one developer sites.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_1...

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#47

Post by asdff »

YZF wrote: post #41
asdff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is standard pitch?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard) Most people that tune by ear tune relatively, e.g. they tune each string to another string. If there's no standard reference then it'll sound fine but you can't play with anyone else who is tuned to the standard... Though many people can tune to a reference pitch as well without using a tuner.

Oh yeah, my chromatic tuner is set to 440 hz. My guitar stays in pretty good tune to my ears at least but I would retune it with the tuner if playing with other instruments for sure or if it were to get out of tune (never seems to). When I change strings I do check my intonation too. Pretty easy to set on stratocasters. I think a lot of guitars especially are not set up well and intonation is probably off even if the open strings are in tune.

Re: Google adds a guitar tuner to Search

#49

Post by YZF »

asdff wrote: post #47
YZF wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard) Most people that tune by ear tune relatively, e.g. they tune each string to another string. If there's no standard reference then it'll sound fine but you can't play with anyone else who is tuned to the standard... Though many people can tune to a reference pitch as well without using a tuner.

Oh yeah, my chromatic tuner is set to 440 hz. My guitar stays in pretty good tune to my ears at least but I would retune it with the tuner if playing with other instruments for sure or if it were to get out of tune (never seems to). When I change strings I do check my intonation too. Pretty easy to set on stratocasters. I think a lot of guitars especially are not set up well and intonation is probably off even if the…

fun fact: it's impossible to get perfect intonation across the scale length on your standard fretboard guitar (like a Strat). The intonation adjustments (like checking the 12th fret) are a compromise. Of course, that's better than just having it wrong all over ;) A lot of people (myself included) just don't notice these small "errors" and sometimes it actually makes for a better sound...
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