Prominently placed in my living
room sits a large, long-necked, hourglass shaped wooden box. That box,
recognized by most people as a “cello”, is actually a double bass. I purchase
the bass when I was in 9th grade. I was playing in the orchestra at
the time (I had been for 4 years then), and was planning on joining the jazz
band at the high school, so with all the personal practice time involved it
became necessary that I purchase my own instrument. Luckily, there was a
luthier not too far from my hometown called KC Strings that specialized in
crafting double basses. While I wasn’t able to afford a custom instrument made
to my own specifications, I was able to select a distinctive one. My “Dark Bass”,
as it became affectionately known, was made from a type of Asian wood (the name
of which I no longer recall) with a beautiful, deep hue. As most basses are
normally constructed using lighter-toned woods, the Dark Bass was easily
spotted in the large bass section of our high school orchestra.
I was
very proud of my unique instrument and did my best to preserve it in like-new
condition, though the rigors of transport and even just plain use began to
leave their marks. It doesn’t matter how careful you are—hauling a 6-foot-tall
four-foot-wide wooden instrument back and forth from school to home is going to
rough an instrument up a bit. Still, I did my best to not cause any more damage
aside from that that was basically unavoidable. I became quite adept at
handling my bass in its black padded-nylon case. Ducking through doorways while
holding the instrument with one hand became like second nature. I even kept a dish rag that I had commandeered
from our home kitchen in the case at all times to be able to wipe the rosin
dust from the strings and body.
I
treated the bass well and it treated me well in return. My bass and I advanced
one year through the school, city and state solo competitions and onto the
regionals. We toured around the state with the school jazz band playing at all
kinds of different festivals. We played in the orchestra and symphony concerts.
We played in the pit orchestra for the school theater’s production of The Sound of Music. We played in ward
Christmas numbers at church. We played an exhausting number of shows together,
right up until the end of high school. By the time we both arrived in Provo for
college at BYU we were both pretty worn out. My playing of the bass become much
more infrequent as the months went on, and after returning from a 2-year
mission, having never even laid eyes on a double bass during that time, I
realized that playing music unfortunately didn’t light the same spark in my
life it once did.
We come
now to the present day: my bass and I play together only for the occasional
recording session or special personal project. Though obviously underused, I
still feel the Dark Bass always deserves a prominent place in the entryway or
living room of whatever house I may be living in, like a seat saved at a
concert for an old, retired member of the performing orchestra. We’ve been
through a lot together, and it is comforting seeing it there--a familiar face
and warm memories greeting me as I come in the door.
