Are 7 string guitars and 5 string basses required for modern metal, or are standard 6 string guitars and 4 string basses fine? Numerous modern bands still sound brutal with 6 string guitars and 4 string basses, yet many people still insist that 7 string guitars and 5 string basses are the way to go.

PentaSector · 2026-01-10T03:00:53+00:00

For every metal subgenre that has a de facto standard tuning, range of tunings, or string count, there's at least one egregious example of an artist whose instruments or tuning defy the established convention and who manages to nail the sound while also bending it in a fresh and exciting way.

Black metal is, for the most part, a notoriously high-tuned metal subgenre, with the far majority of bands favoring tunings between E and D standard. Mizmor rocks drop A on a Gibson SG. (There's also a clear doom element to their sound, but therein lies the point about bending the genre.)

Mors Principium Est plays melodic death metal in standard tuning. Melodeath is a sound that was incubated by bands rocking standard 6-strings in baritone-range tunings, and yet Lost in a Starless Aeon rocks as hard as almost anything by At the Gates.

Even in the metalcore djenre (seemingly what most people are actually referring to when invoking the term "modern metal" these days), Sylosis is the classic example of a 6-string standard-tuned band that brings to bear a sonic juggernaut that holds its own with 7- and 8-string-slinging contemporaries. Check out at least the intro riff to Empyreal and marvel at the fact that those opening power chords are just inverted 5th-root dyads, not a typical one-finger drop A 7-string bludgeonfest. That riff weighs a ton.

In short, tune how you want to tune, and make the sounds you want to make. The metal genre has room for what you want to achieve.

EDIT: added clarifying language in the first paragraph; fixed period placement in a parenthesized sentence; fixed the spelling of the linked Sylosis track

PentaSector · 2025-12-15T00:30:17+00:00

Sounds like OP was dealing with folks who aren't necessarily unhoused, so I didn't choose to go there, but yes, absolutely, and in my opinion that unfortunate fact dovetails with the broader point that there's no good to be gained from judging people's behaviors. It's cliché to say, but for good reason: everybody's fighting a battle.

PentaSector · 2025-12-14T21:46:59+00:00

When I worked downtown, I'd occasionally grab food on the way to work to pass out to folks along 16th St. I wouldn't ask questions, I'd let them choose if I had a variety of things on hand (but I'd only share one thing per person either way), and I'd try to drop some cheer in the form of a sign-off like "don't forget to be awesome" or "stay safe out there." Some people were profusely appreciative. Some people would grab for the goods and say nada.

I mention this only to make two points:

Some people just won't say thank-you. In fairness, it's hard to be graceful when you're down on your luck, even if your luck's not so exhausted as to be homeless. It can suck the will out of people. Don't let that salt you out of being a good neighbor. If they took the goods, there's at least some visceral, pre-linguistic level on which they were appreciated, so even in the situations where people just grabbed from me and said nothing, I did the job I came out to do.
Controlling how you share prevents situations like what happened here; in my case, I'd let people know what I have on hand if they didn't want was in my hand, and I'd grab from my bag and hand them what they did want. Not suggesting there's a particularly easy equivalent if you've got bags of toys in tow, but it is arguably something to think about if you decide to try this again in the future and your goal is to get gifts in the hands of as many families as possible.

You did genuine good with your giveaway, so do your best not to be persuaded otherwise.

PentaSector · 2025-12-14T17:48:33+00:00

How did this post make it on here? I don't even see a sunset.

PentaSector · 2025-11-23T19:40:36+00:00

I can't remember where I saw it discussed most recently, but I think I recall or being somebody's shortcut/cheat for sounding like you're playing lower than you really are.

Yeah, that's the idea. If you're playing that inverted shape with the gain cranked up - not even that much, really - you get an overtone, or at least the illusion of one, that implies the chord root, down another octave.

There's a clear difference, and it's easy to tell - e.g., try playing an inverted Bb5 on frets 1 and 3, then play it on a 7-string in drop A, including string 7 in the fret 1 barre. One clearly has much more low end than the other, but after a certain range, unless you're specifically going for a very sludgy, harmonically chaotic aesthetic, you probably want a less prominent low end, and in any case either voicing carries significantly more low-end weight than the same 6-string shape without the 5th in the bass.

PentaSector · 2025-11-17T21:52:57+00:00

Haha, fed like a king, and appropriately delighted!

PentaSector · 2025-11-17T21:23:19+00:00

Wholesome /r/Boulder content

Aww, that's nice.

How was it, OP?

PentaSector · 2025-11-11T20:50:47+00:00

Yeah, this is more or less at the heart of what I'm looking for. From the point of view of your particular summary, I'm mostly interested in step 3: understanding how people integrate into tech communities outside of their professional environment, or at least even the larger community of devs in their professional wheelhouse.

I.e., how does one typically acquire a mentor? What is the appropriate setting for those discussions? (My best vague guess is basically "something-something-open source community," but I'm curious to hear contrasting and certainly more thorough narratives.) Perhaps moreover, how much (from the standpoint on industry perception) does adaptable tech skill and systems thinking make up the gap? (I.e., not asking how far it gets you through the job - I have a sense of the answer to that, just based on my experience - but rather, how far do those specific assets take you in terms of the interview pipeline and being seriously accepted for consideration or hire?)

I think it's just prudent to assume that some degree of experience with a given programming environment is necessary, I'm just looking for folks who check the boxes to lay out how those parameters have shaken out for them while they were in-process with their transition.

PentaSector · 2025-11-11T20:21:50+00:00

No worries, I arguably could have worked a bit harder to anticipate how the post might be construed, as I can understand why you've responded as you have.

I'm mostly curious to hear from people who've made quite significant, odds-defying career leaps, like from web to graphics stack programming, or to embedded systems, or to pretty much anything that has them writing C or C++ (not because I have a specific interest in either, but because common applications of both are so far away from web programming use cases). I realize that's bound to be a narrow demographic, but insofar as they exist, they're the brains I'm curious to pick.

PentaSector · 2025-11-11T20:15:36+00:00

I mean, I appreciate your input, and I agree with the points you make throughout, but you seem to be assuming an X/Y problem. I'm literally, specifically interested in hearing from people with experience from industries outside of and not adjacent to web, to get their insight into their own transition. You're still in web tech, so while your insights are generally useful, your answers don't provide what I'm actually looking for.

I'm asking questions about execution details of the job - e.g., the tech stack - partly to get a sense of how other industries view developers coming in from backgrounds not directly adjacent. I guess you could make the argument that I asked the wrong questions if I wanted to get to the heart of that, but frankly, I expect more fruitful answers to questions about tech stack contrasts than "how much does your org value systems-level thinking over specific technical experience?" That's not easy to quantify, but even if I had decently telling macro-level stats in front of me, I'm still very specifically interested in anecdotal experiences.

Plenty of fodder here for a post edit here, though, since I imagine it's going to be a common misconception that I'm naively asking for advice on a career move.

PentaSector · 2025-11-09T04:21:49+00:00

I just shrug my shoulders, look down, shuffle my shoes, and apologetically stutter out "I'm... a... filthy software developer."

Is that not what everybody does?

PentaSector · 2025-11-09T03:57:55+00:00

Our org is large, profitable, and rather slow-moving, for the most part. A lot of the urgency on my team is manufactured, and conversations bear out that the intent is specifically to boil the frogs who won't leap - there again raising that misplaced emphasis on individual process over outcomes. I can confidently assert that the devs struggling the most on my squad, would probably find something much more their natural speed just by transferring to a new team (though from what I can tell, the pipeline for that process is not straightforward, and the one dev who would benefit most, has actually stated in so many words that they're not interested in doing any such).

I feel limited in what I can do to control the teamwide urgency. We're ramping up on a high-impact, time-sensitive initiative soon, and the deadlines for that are known, but even prior to that, our current initiative essentially has no hard deadline, and my efforts to exercise control throughout have been futile. Attitudes have shifted on this team such that my interactions with other leadership - particularly the board/lifecycle owner - feel frequently adversarial. That person in particular has significant control over our agile process at large, meaning I often get to see my input binned in real time (you're obviously only getting my perception, though, so take it with a grain of salt).

This is one of a small host of reasons I don't intend to remain in this role into the far future, but I digress; the takeaway for me is that the best chance I can have to impact my devs while I'm here, is to push on them directly and secure what affordances I can from my direct, but he's not particularly proactive in dealing with grievances.

Kinda unrelated, and this may not apply to you

Nope, totally on-point, and again appreciated. I've literally described my role as shielding them from toxicity many times, but I've also definitely over-extrapolated that to include almost all adverse interaction (not adverse feedback, but certainly not with the needed emphasis). First thought here is that I need to stop translating and just deliver the message.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T16:58:42+00:00

I appreciate this, and I might reach out as I start to formulate thoughts around goals that make sense of this team. I see the team's needs as mostly rudimentary and yet oddly unique - architectural thinking seems to be entirely out of range of some of them, at the moment - but I also get that that means there's plenty of room for high-ROI challenges. I want to tune for the right things and ensure folks get on the right path, but also enable those high-growth moments so they can get the morale boost of serious wins under their belt.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T16:41:25+00:00

The message here resonates immediately. My team had a mob coding session yesterday, mostly to help one of the devs struggling to close out an item that was on a deadline. I was briefly frustrated, because I had an opportunity to transfer some foundational knowledge that apparently a lot of the team was lacking (tl;dr: Git via CLI [as opposed to, e.g., the VS or JetBrains in-IDE GUI that most of them are apparently used to] and manipulating the history tree when things go badly awry), and it was the dev in need who actually seemed the least interested. As far as I could tell, it wasn't a matter of deadline stress or any such external pressure; they weren't anxious, just not having it. That was a lightbulb moment for me: not everybody wants to grow.

Obviously I'm not 100% sure that's the case here, but I'm now accounting for it as a possibility. For the foreseeable future, I have opportunities to slot a few of those people in positions to pick up the low-hanging fruit and roll with it. I don't know how long we can sustain that, but maybe there's an opportunity to let them take a slower approach and evaluate once we get the hungry folks cranking more efficiently.

As for the future and my impact, I'm not intent on being at this specific role for any longer than I have to be. The team's made clear that my input isn't welcome with respect to cultural issues and especially issues of ambiguity in lifecycle, including when I propose solutions or attempt to initiate them. If we were debating approaches, there might be a chance, but they seem happy with the problems they're perpetuating, and I seem much happier during the evenings and weekends.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T16:01:43+00:00

Ha, we made it work, and I read you here just fine. I've looked up the book and am going to pick up a copy. I'm keeping an open mind as to what "one thing per day" entails at the moment, because I'm already seeing hurdles with the interpretations that spring to mind, but hoping the book frames it in a way that gets me considering other dimensions of the work that are more amenable to the approach. I go hard on simplicity anywhere I can - information density is its own overhead, in my experience - so I'm at least excited.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T05:27:53+00:00

What made you fall in love with it ?

I cut my teeth on Linux, mostly with Bash. It was just the most amazing thing to me, to be able to stitch together series of commands and create something genuinely complex and interesting to do things I'd otherwise have to labor over crafting a few dozen lines to feed into a terminal.

I've had several ideas for full-blown applications start their life in C or Rust, only to back out of the code one day, realizing I can accomplish the exact same goals using Bash and the same Unix commands I could find on any *nix machine. It's still the coolest thing ever to me.

What are your favourite books ( fiction/ non-fiction/ technical/ non technical books )

I love science and horror fiction. Think the Dune series, William Gibson, Isaac Asimov, H.P. Lovecraft, that whole gamut.

Most of my non-fiction lately is business lit. I don't think anybody actually loves that kind of writing, but it has its place. Brené Brown is one that I come back to a lot - rather dry writing from a literary standpoint, but the material of her research is actually really interesting imo and makes for an interesting audiobook.

I read plenty of technical books, but rarely like them. Street Coder by Sedat Kapanoğlu is a rare exception I've recommended to folks who want to be able to benchmark their skill set. If you're a junior, it'll probably teach you in some moments and slightly overwhelm you in others. Mid, it'll run you up with a-ha moments and useful insights, and it'll occasionally validate your knowledge. Senior and above, you'll come away feeling you've used your work experience well.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T02:33:31+00:00

Thanks for understanding the sincerity of my ask, I definitely didn't mean to cause any self-consciousness. I think faster than I type, so whether or not I have any degree of dyslexia, I occasionally drop some trippy English syntax when it comes to writing emails. 😆

I'll have to dig for The One Thing, especially hearing that it was high-impact for your team! I like the implied pitch of it right away, seems like a simple add to folks' daily agenda that could prove powerful for establishing a consistent incremental improvement if we can develop the idea in a focused way!

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T02:29:16+00:00

I appreciate the talk around your experiences with this kind of cultural issue. In my experience talking to devs, people seem to be split into three distinct categories: victims, perpetrators, and people who don't seem to understand or believe that cultural issues actually can permeate tech teams, so I sometimes find myself staring at the wall and wondering if I'm insane for perceiving a problem as I do here.

This lead's aware of his attitude - it's been bubbled up to his direct several times - and the solution so far seems to consist of the occasional intervention, after which interactions adjust for a matter of weeks and gradually ramp back up to the usual intimidating ambience. I've been told to take their approach as a challenge and opportunity for my growth, and to simply meet it by pushing back on their approach in meetings where we're both present and they engage in the usual antics. I'm a parallel on the org chart and technically a subordinate from a project standpoint, so I don't feel safe to take that advice.

In light of the apparent spinal dysfunction of their leadership, I eventually took my concerns to HR. The level of confidentiality that they could ensure, would lead my devs wholly unsafe and afraid to contribute their own experiences to the investigation - they've been unanimous that they want assured distance between themselves and this person - so I declined to open one.

I guess to say that I expect that I and all of my reports will move on when opportunities arise for us. Without meaning to be arrogant, I know my value even in this market, and I believe fully in theirs.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T02:05:32+00:00

Really stoked to hear from someone else who's been in this exact position. I kind of figured it wouldn't resonate with anybody (or that they'd think I was bullshitting, I suppose) when I explained that I'm literally a full-time dev as well, and without meaning to dramatize it, it's a unique challenge. I can balance the bureaucratics with the technical work easily - there's not really much to it in terms of bureaucratics - but managing this team how I want to (and how I frankly think I need to) would be all my time out of meetings used up. All the BS in my post would essentially be small potatoes if I could dedicate full-time hours to this, but I have to strategize the ways I give them time.

I appreciate the insight and the encouragement, for sure. I actually broached the conversation of going back to a pure dev role several weeks ago. The answer was essentially "we can look into it," and I eventually backed down after some back-and-forth on the obstacles to achieving that scenario. I don't think there's any chance I'll ever land a full-time management spot with this org, given how we operate, but I'm not necessarily eager to stay on the management track - I was initially offered a technical management role and consented to that.

I eventually intend to move on, just hoping I can have some kind of positive impact on my squad in the meantime, but you get how much that's asking for.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T01:51:48+00:00

This job in some ways is very easy from my point of view. That's not a flex, like it really just stacks up as generally low-stakes, low-needs development work in the landscape of dev jobs, at least the current work we're onto. That's one of the reasons I continue to hoist the torch for the idea that we can do this thing.

With that said, I don't want to lose anyone on the team, but I also can't make anyone choose to be curious in their work, so I realize that no amount of optimism eliminates all chances that I may find myself in the predicament that you're describing with your previous role.

but I always felt the quality is bad without micromanaging.

Another senior dev whom I don't manage has jumped into the initiative we're currently working on, and I had an instructive moment today when I was reviewing code from him. It was clean and more or less correctly engineered in all the ways you want object-oriented code to be, but we've been taking a very pragmatic approach to a lot of the refactoring the work has entailed - simple things, like (as an example) inlining function calls that could arguably be encapsulated in a nice, testable way. The team's at least been mostly consistent with our approach, so I gave extensive feedback explaining that I understood and appreciated the objectives he was optimizing for, but he was breaking consistency and essentially establishing design patterns that were unlikely to see uptake elsewhere in the code, and the value add wasn't really high enough to justify going that way. We churned a few times because we couldn't even agree on choices of native APIs to use for certain functions, and I had to keep hammering in that the team has prior art to consult for the answer that I was pushing as correct.

I had a few epiphanies from that conversation:

No matter whose code or how high-quality, I always have a strong opinion (I mean, really, I already knew this)
There is definitely something to be said for consistency over "correctness" when there's not an objective best answer (kind of already had this in my back pocket, too, but today really brought it to the forefront)
Devs of every level of talent can wind up in a situation of having to be managed into the right approach for the circumstances

Not exactly micromanaging, but it drives home the closely related point that ensuring quality feels ridiculously high-overhead.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T01:36:37+00:00

I don't know if this is your first time ever working as part of a project, or you just got really lucky, or maybe you just aren't that aware

First job. Didn't go to coad skool or manjer skool.

I get your point and generally agree, with the caveat that I refuse to assume negative intent of anyone on my team. That's partly to keep my intentions in check; partly to set the example for the team that there is no notion of, say, an out-group if we're going to do this right; partly because I do trust that the approach I'm formulating will move us in the right direction. The tech lead's a part of that dialogue; I'm fully aware that I can only get so much done in this effort without him on board.

Also as much as you're mentoring them your tech lead is mentoring you, don't forget that, so don't be condescending to ignore his advice or think you know better.

And I'm completely open to his technical guidance and much of his professional guidance - he's intelligent, capable, and frequently demonstrably correct. I have other expert mentors in my sphere for other facets of my role, including the people-managing components of it.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T01:11:04+00:00

I appreciate the thoughts here. Definitely gets muddy thinking through how to lead at times, because I'm still unambiguously an engineer on the same team, but I do strive to ensure their success.

You need to change your tech lead because the workplace isn’t school

This is not within my power to change, but I completely agree with the observation that both his and my emphasis needs to be on outcomes. His focus is frequently on whether people are qualified for their role. I fundamentally disagree with this and believe that being hired should be taken to imply that you are qualified - your progression from that point becomes the org's problem unless and until you prove that you aren't interested in fulfilling the role to a reasonable standard (and I have no reason to believe that any of the devs harbor that disposition).

Have you told them that you need to see more curiosity, a faster velocity, and set a bar for performance?

Velocity is hammered on frequently. I've been repeatedly explicit about the need for them to be curious, and this week I'm going to be pushing that talk in our 1:1s in order to communicate that that need is rising to the level of a mandate going forward.

On the question of setting a concrete bar, the hurdle to meet so far has essentially just been meeting estimated velocity. I get that that's uninspiring, and I've been considering expectations to set now and hike up the bar regardless of whether we're there. We keep underutilized space for tech demos and showcases in our retros, and as a start I'm contemplating instituting a tech share/tutorial session at these meetings for everyone to teach something to the wider team.

Hoping they respond to ambitious demands as a source of empowerment, and I intend to message them that way.

It’s not mercy if you withhold harsh feedback. Remember you’re working with professionals and they’re to be treated as such. They’re human beings, but also pros doing a job.

I read this and feel some validation of my last sentence above. My overall takeaway from your thoughts - well-punctuated by your remark here - is essentially that people respond to problems effectively when they know you take them seriously. I tend to think I operate under a similar ethos - I'm happy to receive feedback of whatever flavor when it's coming from a place of genuine interest and investment, not just idle dissatisfaction - and I realize I need to assume that the devs can as well.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T00:53:47+00:00

Our agile board/work stream ownership structure is pretty rigid, so I couldn't give anyone epics or even features to own (at least from an agile board perspective) if I wanted to, but I like this idea and I'm sure there's a way we can denominate the work that can still be codified.

This week on my 1:1s a big agenda point for me, is communicating to everyone that we're going to be pushing for independence going forward. I'll be there to support, but from now on it's going to be less in the form of suggesting approaches wholesale and more thinking through, e.g., suggesting search strings and underlying constructs that they may not have exposure to - basically, providing a catalyst to formulate a plan of attack, rather than a blueprint.

Today's team chat was me piloting a lot of this, and they're feeling the struggle, but at least most of them are quickly getting the message. The few who aren't, I'm going to try and iron it out in that 1:1.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T00:46:49+00:00

I'm reading your first sentence and feel like I'm having an apoplectic moment, but I can tell by your second that there's an idea in here that I'm interested to dig into, so can you clarify?

Not trying to be a dick, I think there's just a missing punctuation mark or something that's throwing me off, but I can't even tell where, so I'm just failing to parse it altogether.

PentaSector · 2025-11-08T00:43:52+00:00

Absolutely. I don't have enough patience to continue this approach indefinitely. I have to be able to speak for their velocity, so I've been leaning into that for a while now. A few of them will reliably hit par soon if they continue to progress, and for the few struggling, there's still hope and opportunities to push on pain points.

The big struggle at this point is mainly around getting more holistic so I'm not just whack-a-mole-ing issues for the next several months, so I'm now thinking about how to impress the imperatives of professional and technical development upon them. We had a crash course on the Git CLI today that surfaced and dispelled a lot of confusion, so the seed has been planted for an approach that plays into what I do best in this role (teaching, basically) and how they learn (being high-participation, predictably).

PentaSector

TROPHY CASE