Daily Lobo: What instrument do you play for UNM's marching band?
Patrick Beare: This is called a snare drum. It's part of the drum line, the percussion instruments that are actually marched on the field.
DL: How long have you played it?
PB: I started in the fifth grade, so I guess that would be about eight years.
DL: So you must really like it.
PB: Yeah, I do. I'm majoring in music, actually.
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DL: So do you play a lot of other instruments?
PB: Yeah. I play all the percussion instruments, and I'm also doing music education, which means we have to learn a little bit about each instrument: all the brass instruments, woodwind instruments and the string instruments, as well.
DL: What's your favorite?
PB: I'd have to say the marimba. It's a very big instrument. It can be up to five octaves in length, and you play it with yarn mallets, and you can play with two mallets or four mallets.
DL: Do you want to play in an orchestra, or do you want to teach?
PB: I actually want to teach. I think I want to be a high school band director - that's what I'd like to do.
DL: Why do you want to do that?
PB: I think back to how much fun I had in band in high school. We would always go on trips and play a lot of great music, and it just sounds like a lot of fun doing music and being paid to do it. And getting paid to teach kids music - that just sounds like a dream job to me. I wouldn't ever have to go to work.
DL: What would you do if you didn't get to do that? What's Plan B?
PB: Plan B would probably be seeing how many gigs I can get playing drumset or a symphony gig if that happened. But I definitely want to stay in music, so music's Plan A through Z, I guess.
DL: Have you had to take classes outside of music?
PB: We have our core classes. Especially in music education there's a lot of other classes we have to take, as well. We have to take a bunch of English classes, and science and history and all that, because there's always a chance that when you're a music educator, they'll be short - maybe in the history department - and you might have to teach a history class. So, they need you to be well-rounded.
