Wednesday, November 8, 2017

THE BASS GUITAR: SOMEBODY WENT FOR HIS DREAM


Imagine blog post









                                          IMAGINE THE FUTURE YOU

FREE Nov. 10-12

                                                      By Ada Brownell


Our oldest son, Gary Brownell, grew up playing the electric bass guitar. He studied music in college, also played the trumpet, but has spent his life as a professional sound engineer and stage designer. He believes his work in electronics and light is a calling and every church sound and electronics worker should also be a musician.

Gary, widely known in Christian music circles for his talent with sound, would have loved to meet Paul Tutmarc, inventor of the electronic bass.

Gary also loves my glossy chocolate frosting. Following is the recipe.

I tell about Paul Tutmarc because as a young man he caught a dream. His story is in the first chapter of my book, Imagine the Future You. Here’s part of that chapter.

DREAM

Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, Washington, traveled in a band and often felt sorry for the acoustic bass fiddle player, who always drove alone because his huge instrument left room in his car only for the driver.

 An upright bass fiddle is as tall as many adults, quite fat and wide, and doesn’t bend in convenient places as a human body does. So the bass player missed the fun with the other band members, whose vehicle rocked with conversation, laughter, and joking among friends. The bass player had the company of only his silent instrument.

From age fifteen, Paul Tutmarc had an interest in steel guitars—the ones usually used in Hawaiian music. He became an accomplished musician and wanted to magnify the sound of the steel. He looked at the innards of the telephone to see how it worked to pick up sound and began tinkering with it. Bob Wisner, a radio repairman and another friend, Art Stimpson, worked with Paul, and they figured out how to use electronic amplification on musical instruments.

Paul electrified zithers, pianos, and Spanish guitars.

Then he carved an electronic “bass fiddle” about the size and shape of a cello and the first electric bass guitar came into being in 1933. Paul eventually made a forty-two-inch-long solid-body bass, which was lighter and smaller. The guitar was featured in the 1935 sales catalog for Tutmarc’s company, Audiovox.

The bass guitar, however, didn’t become popular until the 1950s, when Leo Fender, with employee George Fullerton, developed the first mass-produced instrument.

Next time you hear a loud, pulsating bass guitar behind a band, remember Paul Tutmarc,[1] who began his music career in a church choir and caught a dream.

CUT LOOSE YOUR DREAMS AND IMAGINE



Paul’s dream took work, practice, and trial and error, and so does becoming the person our Creator planned for us to be.

The earlier we start working toward our dreams the better. When we are young, we are like clay that can be worked and changed by circumstances, relationships, decisions we make, what we experience, and what we put into our heads. When we become adults, our spirits might become hard—perhaps even like clay that has to be hurt and broken—before it can be changed.

So good choices now save heartache later, and we make those decisions every day.

There is no one else exactly like you, and God loves you just the way you are. Yet, He expects you to allow Him to lead you into a great and wonderful life.

Excerpt from Imagine the Future You ©Ada Brownell October 2013



GLOSSY CHOCOLATE FROSTING

2 ¼ cups sugar

3 1-ounce squares chocolate (unsweetened) or substitute 9 tablespoons cocoa

½ cup margarine

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup milk

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine sugar, chocolate, margarine, salt, milk and syrup. Cook, stirring frequently, to 232-degrees F. or until softball stage. Cool to lukewarm. Add vanilla. Beat until thick enough to spread.









[1] http://tutmarc.tripod.com/Paultutmarc.html

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