Why are scooped mids and high gain "evil, satanic, tough, etc."?

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Eazy-ESP

Eazy-ESP

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Has there ever been a psychological explanation?

I was listening to the Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn! and thinking how nice and positive it all sounded. 12 string I think, clean kind of tone. Then I went back to my usual programming of metal.

Why do we feel excited by distortion and scooped mids and all that? Is it because it seems "bad" to be pushing electronics that far, like it feels rebellious doing burnouts in a V8? Probably doesn't feel as bad ass doing burnouts in an electric car, so maybe it's the sound of a V8 that is similar to the sound of gain.

Can someone get this question to Dr. Jordan Peterson?
 
Here's what AI has to say about it.

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MadAsAHatter said:
Here's what AI has to say about it.

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But it doesn't really explain why distortion feels bad ass. Like not even just for us guitar players. Regular civilians must be feeling something in particular when they hear distorted guitars. And I don't think it's because of all the extra stuff mentioned in that AI overview.

Like, when I wind up the gain, it makes me play evil. In fact when I'm using my Kemper, one of the things that I notice is when I'm using a Josh Middelton profile for example, it makes me play metal and I can't really play anything else. When I play a mid gain, or rock profile, I can make happy stuff.

Everyones looking for God in things, maybe Satan is in clipping tubes? (I'm kidding religious people! Don't take it too seriously. Plus you can also have cool sounding, distortion that isn't "satanic". That's more a melodic choice I think.)
 
I’ve thought about this as well and here’s my take.

As a society things in the past tended to be more traditional in the sense of modesty and images of happiness. Money went farther and life wasn’t as stressful back then overall.

If you reflect to today, none of those are true and as such we gravitate towards an escape that makes us happy. Our music choice can help us express that of which words cannot and help us reduce stress by doing so. So we gravitate towards angry tonal voicing to be able to express a chaotic world we live in compared to prior generations.
 
Look at it from the opposite perspective for some extra food for thought.

 
glpg80 said:
I’ve thought about this as well and here’s my take.

As a society things in the past tended to be more traditional in the sense of modesty and images of happiness. Money went farther and life wasn’t as stressful back then overall.

If you reflect to today, none of those are true and as such we gravitate towards an escape that makes us happy. Our music choice can help us express that of which words cannot and help us reduce stress by doing so. So we gravitate towards angry tonal voicing to be able to express a chaotic world we live in compared to prior generations.
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I like your theory. All though it made me sad for a past I never even experienced. Like the 60s seem like they would have actually been amazing. All this information and crap being fed at us all the time now.

That said, it is still not quite what I mean. Like I get that we like that angry tonal voicing. But why is it angry? Why is distortion and gain angry? Maybe it's the chaos of the overdrive tone? It's unsafe and out of control?
 
The same could be said about yelling during arguments. It’s to convey a message of anger. Music theory fundamentally contains modes to express both happiness and sadness. The tone simply helps to support those feelings based on the notes we choose to play together.
 
glpg80 said:
The same could be said about yelling during arguments. It’s to convey a message of anger. Music theory fundamentally contains modes to express both happiness and sadness. The tone simply helps to support those feelings based on the notes we choose to play together.
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That's actually a great parallel. The distorted tones are more like a human voice distorting and straining and yelling and growling and whatever. Whereas the clean tones can be more soothing, like a friendlier conversation. Nice. I like this way of looking at it.
 
It's really only from your prospective that you think of scooped mids and gain/distortion as evil. From my perspective these things just are, with no inherent feelings built in. It's the way they are used, the context, the intensity, or any other number of factors that put the emotion into the music.

I'll borrow glpg's analogy. Yelling is just raising your voice. The raised voice means nothing but turning the volume up without other factors to give it context. Is it yelling in anger? Shouting for joy? Raising your voice to be heard over other loud noises? Imagine someone shouting a with in a complete monotone voice "look over there." Without all the other elements that would go along with it could you discern if that was a warning something is approaching? Something funny is happening over there? A distraction? Or a simple look in that direction?

It's sort of the same with distortion or clean sound. Done with the right context (think key, chord progression, note intensity, etc.) you can make a pristine clean sound feel super angry. Similarly you can make an ultra saturated, mid scooped sound feel happy and calming. To use a silly saying, it's not about the size of the ship it's the motion of the ocean.
 
MadAsAHatter said:
It's really only from your prospective that you think of scooped mids and gain/distortion as evil. From my perspective these things just are, with no inherent feelings built in. It's the way they are used, the context, the intensity, or any other number of factors that put the emotion into the music.

I'll borrow glpg's analogy. Yelling is just raising your voice. The raised voice means nothing but turning the volume up without other factors to give it context. Is it yelling in anger? Shouting for joy? Raising your voice to be heard over other loud noises? Imagine someone shouting a with in a complete monotone voice "look over there." Without all the other elements that would go along with it could you discern if that was a warning something is approaching? Something funny is happening over there? A distraction? Or a simple look in that direction?

It's sort of the same with distortion or clean sound. Done with the right context (think key, chord progression, note intensity, etc.) you can make a pristine clean sound feel super angry. Similarly you can make an ultra saturated, mid scooped sound feel happy and calming. To use a silly saying, it's not about the size of the ship it's the motion of the ocean.
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More great points. Got me thinking about some of Devin Townsend tone. Lots of distortion, but then turned into a calming, atmospheric wall of sound.
 
glpg80 said:
Money went farther and life wasn’t as stressful back then overall.
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I don’t know about less stressful- I worried all the time about all sorts of shit. Few things are different. Naming a few things of stress in the past; money, family, social status, death, work, oil, Cold War, retirement…. Still here today. We do worry about what our selfies look like and how many likes we get on a post I guess. I honestly don’t think much is changing, we are just getting older and watch what young people do wrong. It’s the old man in the corner scenario “I wouldn’t do that if I were you”. “Shut up old man, you crazy”
 
Good distortion is cool because it sounds like a mix of the voice of some intimidating wild animal or monster and a race car engine blasting at full tilt. Sometimes it sounds big enough to resemble a turbulent force of nature, like some catastrophic, explosion filled storm or something. People tend to associate those sounds with aggression and destruction.
 
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I always thought ear piercing, clean, solid state amps at high volumes were far more evil than a high gain sound.

But I am an outlier. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
TheGreatGreen said:
Good distortion is cool because it sounds like a mix of the voice of some intimidating wild animal or monster and a race car engine blasting at full tilt. Sometimes it sounds big enough to resemble a turbulent force of nature, like some catastrophic, explosion filled storm or something. People tend to associate those sounds with aggression and destruction.
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More great concepts.
 
“ if one is afraid of the growly fire breathing dragon that is the orange channel. “ @braintheory 03/23/2025
 
I've always found the scooped sound much easier on my ears. The high midrange thing may work out well in the mix, but just playing it alone, can cause ear fatigue. A lot of albums I do like have a scooped guitar tone after mixing. I feel no shame for my love of scoop. Nothing evil or wrong about it.

I don't want to hear what Dr. Peterson has to say. It will probably be a one-hour deep discussion about how I'm not taking responsibility for myself by refusing the midrange tone.
 
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BABMusic said:
I've always found the scooped sound much easier on my ears. The high midrange thing may work out well in the mix, but just playing it alone, can cause ear fatigue. A lot of albums I do like have a scooped guitar tone after mixing. I feel no shame for my love of scoop. Nothing evil or wrong about it.

I don't want to hear what Dr. Peterson has to say. It will probably be a one-hour deep discussion about how I'm not taking responsibility for myself by refusing the midrange tone.
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Scooped mids rule. Hell yeah.

People need to stop listening to people at TGP who insist that their 3 watt combo amps with a total bandwidth of like 600 Hz - 2 kHz are “all anybody needs” because “guitar is a midrange instrument.”

Guitar is a midrange instrument in the same way da Vinci was a painter. Yes they both excel at those things, but those things also represent only a portion of their capabilities.
 
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