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Wild Bill’s World With Bill Lanphier: Really Odd-Meter Bass
Meet Bill “WBGO” Lanphier –
Flummoxed. That’s a good way to describe someone trying to play Bulgarian meters for the first time. Actually, even guys familiar with odd meters, including great drummers who have played with Holdsworth and Don Ellis—I ain’t mentioning names here—sometimes scuffle. They’ll limp along, barely nailing a couple bars, then falling completely apart.
No, we’re not talking about just a simple 7/8 or a slower 5/4. Each measure in a Bulgarian kopanitsa (11/16 subdivided 4+3+4), can whiz by in just a second. Check out Farmers Market’s thrash Gankino Horo, from the compilation, Balkans Without Borders.
Yes, there are a few isolated examples of super-fast odd meters scattered around the world, like Venezuela’s Merengue, but, by and large, Bulgarian folk music is home base for the really weird shit. Plus, the melodies are equally nuts: streams of relentless 16th notes, over half of them ornamented with mordents, grace notes, or turns.
Fortunately, you and me, as bass players can fall back on quarter notes and eighth notes when playing Bulgarian music and, for the most part, can elect to bail on the ornaments (I plead guilty). But, knowing where to put those quarter and eight notes can confound even the heaviest studio guys. Actually, simply being able to follow—much less perform—some of the meters is a real challenge. Read on and learn how, as a bassist, to meet that challenge and make strange time signatures groove as hard as any 4/4. Yes, it’s true: the good guys are as comfortable in, say, 13, as Westerners are in 4/4.
HEAR IT FIRST!
The first step is to get the meters into your head. That means not having to count, for example, each of the 11 beats in the kopanitsa. Let’s go back to something we all know. When you play a funk-style, 16th-note based rhythm in 4/4, you’re not counting all 16 of the 16th notes. You instinctively know (or should know) exactly where each falls, and you’re probably patting your foot on only the quarter notes and working around those four major pulses.
The same holds true for any fast, odd meter, like the kopanitsa. The good players don’t count all eleven 16th notes zipping by, but you’d better believe they know exactly where each one falls. That’s why they groove so hard on them.
How do you get the meters into your head? Lots and lots of listening—that’s as important as practicing. If you have sequencing software, program in the bass examples shown in the “bulgarian meters pdf” below. Put an accent on the main pulses, loop each example, and listen to it over and over. You’ll be surprised how listening to the same two bars for just 15 minutes (do this while cleaning cat litter or doing something equally mindless) will really open up your head to a new pattern. Listening to recordings (see suggested listening material) is also important.
NOW PLAY IT!
Once you start to hear the patterns, whip out your bass and play the two and four-bar examples shown. If you don’t have a sequencing program to play along with, set a metronome so that each click represents a 16th note.
A typical performance tempo for the examples shown would be a quarter note equals 100 bpm (16th note equals 400 bpm). But you should start much slower to get a feel for things. For each meter shown, the first repeated bar or bars is a simple pattern which could be played in a more traditional context. The second repeated pattern would work in a more progressive setting.
As you play along, you’ll notice that the meters (each of which—believe it or not—has a Bulgarian folk dance to go along with it) have their own character and each can, and should, groove hard. Though the Bulgarians will often play one section faster than the preceding section, they’re capable of a dead-even metronomic pulse. This gives a strong reference point by which very subtle tempo changes, accelerando, and ritardando, are possible.
After you’ve become comfortable with the meter, try playing along with recordings. Where to find charts with reference mp3s? Get ready for the hard-sell part of this story. I respectfully submit for your perusal my highly-acclaimed online songbook, Bulgarian & Macedonian Instrumentals & Vocals. It contains over 20 print-ready transcriptions (in hi-rez PDF form), of great tunes with meters ranging from 2/4 to 18/16, plus mp3s of the original recordings in normal- and half-speed versions. Check out the link for more info and reviews, plus audio and transcription samples.
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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