A full service music shop will string your guitar, give you a lesson and provide you a job. Patrick’s Music, Etc. repairs and sells instruments and as well as offers lessons. Nineteen out of 22 of the instructors are Fresno State students.

Fresno State alumnus Patrick Balakian, the owner of Patrick’s Music, likes to think of his shop as more of an independent enterprise.

“I don’t like to describe the business as a Mom-and-Pop kind of shop,” Balakian said.

The full service shop hosts a hot dog feed for the Fresno State Bulldog Marching Band every year. “This past year, we had almost 300 people turn out for it,” said Balakian.

Former Fresno State graduate Robert Myers has been teaching guitar lessons at Patrick’s Music since last February.

“I’m basically a professional musician, so here I am my own boss,” Myers said. “I take care of the books, and I take my own calls, so there is a Public Relations aspect to that.”

Before starting his business, Balakian taught band, orchestra, and choir at Selma High School for six years before making the move to Clovis High, where he wrote the school fight song. While at Selma High, he started the Selma Band Festival in 1965, in addition to starting the Mariachi Band program.

“Before the Selma Band Festival, I felt like I was being judged on the way I directed my band for parades, when we focused so much on field shows. With the festival, I could allow my band and other bands to be judged for field shows,” Balakian said.

During Balakian’s tenure at Selma High, he sent his band students to a neighboring elementary school to teach music lessons to little kids. “I’d have them write up lesson plans, and I’d check over them,” Balakian said.

This concept of students-teaching-students occurs in Balakian’s store.

“The main thrust of our students is youngsters, although we’ve had several Fresno State students come in who want to learn an instrument,” said Balakian. “It happens all the time.”

In addition to providing customers with any instrument they may need, Patrick’s provides music lessons.

“I want to be able to grow with you,” Balakian said of the customers he services each day. “I want to be able to sell an instrument to someone, and make sure they’re actually doing something with what I sell them.”

The store also takes pride in its Trade-Up Policy, where a customer can buy an instrument from the shop, then trade it in for another instrument, using the credit they received when they bought the first instrument.