This paper investigates a dynamic model of a cable-mass system equipped with an auxiliary mass element to act as a transverse tuned mass damper (TMD). The cable length varies slowly while the system is mounted in a vertical host structure swaying at low frequencies. This results in base excitation acting upon the cable - mass system. The model takes into account the fact that the longitudinal elastic stretching of the cable is coupled with their transverse motions. The TMD is applied to reduce the dynamic response of the system. The parameters of TMD are selected by the application of a linearized model and a single-mode approximation. In this approach the excitation is represented as a narrow-band Gaussian process mean-square equivalent to...