We recently connected with Dustin Ragland and have shared our conversation below.

Dustin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I had been a musician in various projects for 5-6 years, playing in bands across a few different music scenes. I had, however, stayed relatively pragmatic about the unlikelihood of full-time music work once I had finished college. I assumed one of my degree study paths would end up being the most reasonable choice at graduation.

However, I did a couple of recording projects, playing drums with songwriter friends in the studio, and a couple of live performance opportunities working with relatively picky (or even grouchy) recording engineers and session musicians. They were all so complimentary to the work I did, even though I went in with not a lot of experience, that it stirred up a thought in me that if they were sparing in their praise in most cases, I should take it seriously, and take my musicianship more seriously.

It spurred an idea to take a year off of school after graduation, and attempt to play music full-time. I had no idea how I was going to do this, but the seed of the idea germinated throughout my senior year of undergraduate study. I met with a drummer/producer friend who (unbeknownst to me at the time) I would eventually end up following in their shoes in terms of a full-time musical gig. However, at the time I only knew I wanted to ask them: “how do I do this as a job?” Since they were doing it as a job already. I met up with them, and within 5 minutes we weren’t talking about how to play drums, or better musicianship directly, but we listened to a lot of difficult music they loved at the time, we ran errands and talked about how strange healthcare and taxes were for musicians who were self-employed, and we spent time talking about the dangers of our music scene in creating a narrow form of musical art, how politics and commercial pressures can corrupt. I was initially so disappointed in the time, as I didn’t learn “how to do this as a job,” but it turned out it was the most helpful day I had ever experienced as a musician, and a firm, but valuable glance into the reality of full-time musician work, not just the pleasant idea.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I work for the music technology company Ableton, which has created industry-changing music creation software and hardware over the past 20+ years. I am a part of Ableton’s Education team, working to provide resources and community to a wide range of musician-educators. Though our main offices are in Berlin, Germany, with regional offices in Pasadena and Tokyo, many of us are remote, and I work with educators throughout North America, based in Atlanta, Georgia, myself.

As the instruments we make continue to grow in use in classrooms of all kinds, a lot of my work centers on helping educators gain confidence in their work to help students find their own musical voices through the use of music software and hardware. Sometimes this means I visit universities, secondary schools, and public gatherings to provide educational workshops, and at other times we collaborate with other educators and artists to inspire students and teachers.

I am most proud of our work to continue to give educators a voice in the kinds of support we offer them and students – some of what educators share form their student communities even influences the way we create and shape our instruments. The community of creative musicians who use our instruments are highly supportive of one another, and open with their imaginative approaches to songwriting and performance, creating a strong foundation for education to be accessible to many learning levels, and many learning styles.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

While I’m not sure of the original source, I remember conversations with friends in related creative industries around what they called “maker” vs. “manager” schedules, particularly when I was managing my time between studio recording sessions, writing original music, teaching classes, and performing music live. There was a dearth of project management tools available in those days, at least affordable ones, so much of the organization was held together by written notes and small digital calendars.

What was most illuminating about the maker schedule, is that it was important to schedule very large chunks of time to be efficient: think in minimums of 3 hours or more, and think of project timelines in months and not days or weeks. This is because generative creativity can often take time to even get into some kind of flow, and each person’s perception of their own and others’ flow might be different – but for most creative workers, they need space on either end of the actual creative work to build momentum, then come to a comfortable halt.

At other times, in a “manager” schedule, one might be most efficient to schedule time in small chunks, with 30 minutes as a minimum, and in quick succession, to get the most out of a given project or creative need.

Neither approach is entirely perfect, nor is one more inherent to creatives than the other, and most creative entrepreneurs will need to do both throughout a given week or month, but being able to compartmentalize, and more importantly, communicate these chunks of time to others was a massive help for me to understand how to best plan time for creative projects, and feel both free to use my imagination, and effective in using it, but achieving some kind of balance between these approaches.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Perhaps it veers into too-specific of a policy territory, but there is a better world possible in leveraging the power of shared public resources (through grants, local/state/federal government policies, through private firms’ structural funding) to not only commission works, but to provide health and income security to artists. The US tax structure is highly regressive toward self-employed artists, and the health care system is quite punitive to self-employed individuals and collectives. This in turn tends to provide the most income and health insecurity to artistic communities and individuals who are already marginalized structurally in the US. Choosing to use our resources to create better structural support for not only what artists give the public, but also what the public can do to sustain creativity as a common good, by sustaining the common good of creatives, would go a long way towards connecting creative industries and just public goods.

Contact Info:

• Website: youngweathermusic.bandcamp.com
• Instagram: walrusmuse
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinragland/
• Other: https://www.ableton.com/en/certified-training/dustin-ragland/

Image Credits
Chase Kerby, Nathan Poppe, Daniel Marand, Dylan Johnson