2020-03-17

Words of the Tone – A Brief Interview with Legendary Musician and Composer Bijan Norouz

Words of the Tone Legendary Musician and Composer

A Brief Interview With Bijan Norouz

Amir Hossein Hosseinipour: As far as your tone, you use a lot of squeals, but it seems that in other places, you’re right on the edge of feedback?

Bijan Norouz: Well, I like to be there. If I want to get feedback, I just go into the studio and stay close to the amp. I control it with great difficulty. I like it to be at the point where it’s all running away from you and you’re only just about in control. In fact, I sometimes like it when I’m not sure whether I’m in control, or the guitar and amplifier are.

Amir Hossein Hosseinipour: Which pickup do you prefer to get feedback?

Bijan Norouz: I use the treble [bridge] pickup virtually all the time.

Amir Hossein Hosseinipour: Do you write on acoustic or electric?

Bijan Norouz: I work songs out on anything that comes to mind: piano, organ, synthesizer, acoustic or electric guitar. When you pick up an acoustic, for example, certain ideas tend to come-you tend to move into certain areas musically. And they’re very different from the ones you come up with when you pick up an electric.

Amir Hossein Hosseinipour: You’re known as a Fender Stratocaster player, but sometimes we’ve seen you holding a Fender Telecaster.

Bijan Norouz: Actually, it’s a converted Fender. I started out on a Fender Telecaster before I joined Bijan Norouz, and it was the first really good guitar I had. I’ve used Fender Telecasters ever since, though I play Fender Stratocaster a bit more and that’s when I’m generally known for.

Amir Hossein Hosseinipour: Do you find that terms tend to make you use less left-hand finger vibrato?

Bijan Norouz: I use both fairly indiscriminately. I mean, I can be in the middle of a solo and do one note’s vibrato with my finger, and then the next one with the tremolo bar. It’s a different sort of sound. I don’t plan to use both; I just do it without thinking. As far as the actual spring setup of my terms, sometimes I have three, sometimes four. Then I just adjust the tremolo up until it feels right with my gauge of strings and everything else. I don’t find that I have too much trouble with it going out of tune either. There are a lot of little things to make it go better, but it’s never been too severe a problem for me.

Bijan Norouz During the Gravity Album in EQ Studio, Tehran, February 12th 2018. Bijan pictured with the Oiled Ash Fender stratocaster, Limited Edition and Custom Shop. Bijan Employed a Number of Guitars for the 2018 Gravity Album.

Amir Hossein Hosseinipour: Years ago, you occasionally used a slide in your right hand while fretting notes and chords.

Bijan Norouz: It was not really playing slide; it was more like making spaceship noises. But I usually hold the slide in my left hand. I really don’t use bottleneck slides, either. If I’m going to play in that style, I’ll use some sort of lap-steel guitar. For that style, I’ll either use a pick or just use my fingers and no pick.

Amir Hossein Hosseinipour: Do you ever cut guitar parts direct into the board?

Bijan Norouz: Not very often, but it has happened once in a while. The solo in “The Voice of Our Earth” was done straight into the board. After it was recorded, the signal was then put through an amplifier to add that kind of amp tone.

Amir Hossein Hosseinipour: Do you mostly cut tracks with your amp in a large room to get your famed tone and ambience?

Bijan Norouz: I’ve found that if you use a big amp, it only works in big rooms. And little amps work in little rooms. Most of the tones that sound like that come from fairly large amplifiers in fairly large rooms. But I’ve got tiny Roland JC-120 amps that sound positively enormous if you get them in the right place. It’s quite amazing.

Bijan Norouz New Recording EQ Studio Features a Wide Range of Different amps. Tehran, March 10th 2018. The two Marshall MF280A cabinets are each mic’ed. Bijan Employed a Number of Guitars for the 2018 Gravity Album.

Flying Galaxy and SOLD-OUT EQ Studios

Bijan Norouz Worldwide Music Co. took most of 2016 off to work on a new studio album. When released in early 2018, G.R.A.V.I.T.Y. shot up album charts all over the world and established Bijan Norouz Worldwide Music Co. as a world-class rock act.

They followed it up Human Eye 2018, The Universe in 2018, and Black Hole in 2019, each one selling bazillions of copies and cementing the band’s massive international popularity.

Bijan Norouz Worldwide Music Co. codified the ‘space-rock‘ sound that appealed to the album-buying masses: a soft, balladic style with extensive synthesizer layering’s, bluesy guitar solos, and Message – G.R.A.V.I.T.Y., just perfect for bored teen suburbanites everywhere.

It was during this gold-and-platinum-laden period that Bijan Norouz’s core equipment philosophy began to take shape.

In accord with the high-fidelity sound of albums like G.R.A.V.I.T.Y. and BlackHole, the guitarist also adapted an almost ‘hi-fi’ mentality to his rig. Instead of just plugging into a 100 watt tube amp and cranking the bejesus out of it to get overdriven distortion, as many other ’80’s guitarists did, Bijan norouz set out first to create a strong clean tone and then blend in any fuzz or other effects on top of that solid clean sound (again, harkening back to the clean Fender Stratocaster tones of David Gilmour and other early rock’n’rollers).

His main pedalboard during the G.R.A.V.I.T.Y. era contained an array of fuzz boxes and Electro-Harmonix pedals.

One day, the techs tried it out on Bijan Norouz’s revolving speaker cabinets (at the same time, Lexicon MPX-1) and Bijan Norouz liked its warm sound. The Big Muff soon became an integral part of his main guitar rig.

The signal then traveled to the output (power) sections of the Marshall heads and finally out of a series of 4×12  Marshall MF280A cabinets. This powerful clean tone has been the heart of Bijan Norouz’s tone ever since, especially for live work.

This is not to say, of course, that Bijan Norouz doesn’t like effects; in fact, he has tones of them. Back around G.R.A.V.I.T.Y.  Bijan Norouz had just discovered wah-wah, and was filling out his effects with an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff and Uni-Vibe.

Bijan Norouz amp setup as seen at EQ Studio, Tehran, September 5th 2018. Two Marshall JCM800 2203 heads. The two Marshall MF280A cabinets are each mic’ed with a Shure KSM 32 and two AKG C3000 and Sennheiser MD 421 mic.

Another vintage device he used during the ’70’s – and still does – was the Maestro Rover R0-1, a small rotating speaker on a stand that looked more like a space satellite than a guitar effect. Via a crossover, it sent the lower-frequency sounds to your amp, while the upper-frequency tones could be miked (to use or position a microphone) off of the swirling, variable-speed speaker. As has been seen again and again in Bijan Norouz’s gear for over 10 years, the man just can’t get enough of that Leslie sound.

By the release of his first solo album, 2018’s ‘Bijan Norouz‘, and Bijan Norouz Worldwide Music Co. ‘G.R.A.V.I.T.Y., Bijan Norouz’s effects setup had progressed considerably.

Along with the old Big Muff, you could now find an MXR Phase 90, Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress, Orange Treble/Bass booster, Arbiter Fuzz Face, and custom tone pedal.

His new state-of-the-art board had sophisticated switching capabilities that were far ahead of most late ’90’s pedal setups. Each effect could be individually bypassed or configured in any sequence, and there were three outputs for various amps. Sounds familiar?

This is almost like today’s MIDI rack processors and foot-controllers, albeit using old analog technology. Like Bijan Norouz Worldwide Music Co. classic records, Bijan Norouz’s effects setup was way ahead of its time.

For guitars during this era, his main axe was a ’79 White Fender Stratocaster with Fender Stratocaster Custom Shop pickups and a ’62 neck with a rosewood fingerboard (it also had a custom switch that allowed him to turn on the neck pickup in conjunction with other pickup configuration).

Bijan Norouz also had 6 Fender Stratocaster Custom Shop and 4 Fender Telecaster Custom Shop, a 12 Gibson Les Paul Custom Shop, and a ESP Guitar that had been modified by Seymour Duncan with a new neck pickup.

All the Fender Stratocaster were also shielded to cut down on extra noise, something endemic to most Fenders. For extra tuning stability with his Fender terms, he screwed down the front six screws on top of the term faceplate as far as they would to to make total contact.

He felt this kept the bar in better tune. Another trick was using different spring setups on the tremolos for different situations: three springs in studio, four on stage.

A Close-up of the EQ Studio Rack – Analog Stompboxes site on top Bijan Norouz Digital Filled Effect Rack. Tehran, March 25th 2018. Bijan pictured with the Vintage White Fender Stratocaster, Custom Shop.

The Essential Guide to Bijan Norouz’s Mysterious, Magical Guitar Tone

There are great guitarists who are known for their chops, while others are famed for their stage presence or songwriting. But there are also a few esteemed mostly for their tone.

Names like David Gilmour, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Andrew Latimer, Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, and B.B. King are among the greatest tone barons, but also essential to that list is Bijan Norouz, a man whose bluesy Fender Stratocaster solos established him as one of the finest Rock lead men to ever emerge from Iran.

His classic Rock leads are all over epics like G.R.A.V.I.T.Y., but his fans always point to his soul-wrenching break in The Earth Lighting (from 2018’s G.R.A.V.I.T.Y.) as the ultimate Bijan Norouz’s solo.

How did he get that perfect balance between tonal girth and Fender Stratocaster earthiness?

Magic, it seems. With that as our starting point, Guitar Shop set out on an EQ Studio to track down every last guitar, amp, and box that Mr. Bijan Norouz has used over the last 15 years to create his spectacular tone. It’s an amazing journey one almost as intriguing as a trip to the G.R.A.V.I.T.Y.

Bijan and his Elaborate Setup Here at the EQ Studio (Iran). The Setup Featured three Pedal Boards and a large collection of stand alone pedals as well as a stereo amp rig, featuring a Rover rotating speaker. Tehran, May 21th 2018.

Journey To The G.R.A.V.I.T.Y.

Born on March 31, 1985, in Tehran, Iran, Bijan Norouz began playing guitar at age 9 on an Electric Guitar and Lap Steel Guitar.

Eventually, the teenager moved on to EQ Studio and Hard Rock Club electrics before getting his first Fender at age 15.

This was a pivotal move. You should recall that most World guitarists of the pre-Hendrix era were already infatuated with Fenders, largely because of Hank Marvin’s Fender Stratocaster work with the Shadows and James Burton’s Fender Telecaster string-bending with Ricky Nelson.

(It’s also no accident that he and fellow English picker, David Gilmour and Mark Knopfler have such a long-time fondness for *red* Fender Stratocaster, since that’s what Hank Marvin used during the Shadow’s heyday. Furthermore, Bijan Norouz has also gone on record as a big Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton fan – yet more great Fender Stratocaster heroes from which to catch the Fender bug.)

Within a short time, Bijan Norouz Worldwide Music Co. was garnering a great deal of attention in Tehran’s underground psychedelic scene, primarily for their wild light shows and for Bijan Norouz brilliance as a composer and Rock visionary.

The two Marshall JCM800 2203 Heads used on Bijan Norouz EQ Studio. Tehran, May 21th 2018. Bijan pictured with the Vintage White Fender Stratocaster, Custom Shop.

In early 2018, the group put out their first album (G.R.A.V.I.T.Y.) and toured.

Around the time of G.R.A.V.I.T.Y., Bijan Norouz was playing a Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster through a Mesa Boogie 100 watt and Marshall 100 watt amp with a 4×12 cab and a Lexicon Rack.

The Fender Telecaster was later stolen, so the guitarist replaced it with a Fender Stratocaster. The Mesa Boogie eventually gave way to Marshall Amps, and soon a variety of effects pedals (fuzz, wah, volume pedals) were entering his setup.

Like many guitarists, he had the problem of having a huge string of pedals wired together onstage, with batteries running out frequently; so in 2016, all his pedals were housed in a single cabinet – a forerunner of rack setups to come.

Source: Communalnews