Music Education Monday: Electric bass lessons from Jaco Pastorius and Bob Babbitt

Our previous two "Music Education Monday" installments about bass dealt mostly with the acoustic variety, so today, here's a post specifically for the plugged-in bassists out there, featuring video lessons from two electric bass players who helped shape modern music. 

Bassist Bob Babbitt, who died in 2012 at age 74, performed on many of Motown's greatest hits of its golden era - essentially, all the records that James Jamerson didn't play on - and in the first embedded video window below, you can see a master class that Babbitt presented in 2006 at a jazz festival in Syracuse, NY.

Jaco Pastorius, of course, is familiar to jazz fans as the bassist for the fusion band Weather Report who in the 1970s and 80s helped revolutionize how the instrument was played. If you're a fan, you also know Pastorius' career was cut short in 1987, when he died at age 35 after being beaten in a confrontation with a nightclub bouncer.

Fortunately for musicians who wish to emulate some of his innovations, in 1985 Pastorius made an instructional film, Modern Electric Bass, to give insight into some of his techniques and concepts. You can see that video in the second embedded window below.

Check out both videos after the jump...