Feature: Marc Schuster Decodes ‘Arguably’
What was the creative process like for this particular album?
The creative process was actually a little weird. I went into the project with one idea in mind, and a few songs into it, I broke my shoulder. That forced me to switch gears. The original idea was to record a lot of sweeping, cinematic instrumental tracks and then to add some minimalist lyrics. You can definitely hear that approach on a track like “The Best Day,” where there’s a long buildup and just a few lyrics that get repeated like a round. But in the week or so after I broke my shoulder, I couldn’t play any music at all, so I concentrated on writing lyrics, which led to songs that had more of a traditional rock structure with verses, choruses, and bridges. “Sell Me the Snake,” for example, came out of that period.
Can you talk about the recording and production process for 'Arguably?’
My process tends to be somewhat chaotic. I’ll usually just fool around on an instrument until something catches my ear. Sometimes I’ll be playing guitar or keyboard. Other times it’s drums And I’m always saving my recordings with filenames like “Funky Bass Riff in A Minor 117 BPM” and “Wobbly Buzzing Feedback Loop." When I broke my shoulder, I couldn’t play any of my instruments, so I started going through all of those files and trying to piece them together into coherent songs. It was like, “Okay, if I speed up this eight-bar drum loop that I recorded in October, it sounds pretty good with this bass part I recorded in January.” Which isn’t too different from my usual modus operandi. The big difference this time around was that I was relying more heavily on older recordings rather than recording parts and piecing them together on the fly.
Can you talk about any standout tracks on 'Arguably' and what makes them special to you?
I think the first and last tracks do a good job of opening and closing the album—and of feeding into each other. The opening track, “The Best Day” kicks off with a galloping piano riff that feels like waking up with a positive attitude. When I wrote that one, I was imagining all kinds of people waking up, starting their days, and knowing that anything was possible. I know I don’t always—or even usually—start my days like that, but I wanted to write a song that would remind me that every day really does offer limitless potential. Or at least that if I go into any given day with a positive attitude, things will tend to work out better than if I’m all gloom and doom.
Of course, by the end of the album, some of the optimism has worn off, and we close with a track called “Blue Light.” I was thinking about the idea that people should probably stop looking at their screens an hour or so before going to bed because they emit a blue light that messes with circadian rhythms. But as someone who’s spent many a long night going down weird informational rabbit holes, I also know that looking away from a screen is easier said than done. So I wrote a song about staying up all night trying to track down a half-remembered tune and then waking up the next day kind of groggy as a result. Which is exactly the kind of situation I wrote “The Best Day” for—a shaky morning where I need a reminder that I’m starting with a clean slate.
Can you share a bit about your musical background and the journey that led you to where you are today?
I’ve dabbled in music for most of my life: piano and guitar lessons when I was really young, a couple of bands in high school and college. I never really pursued it seriously because, for the longest time, there were so many barriers. This was all back in the ‘90s, so short of getting a record deal or paying to have some CDs manufactured, the options for getting my music heard were pretty limited. Plus recording technology was nowhere near where it is today. I had a four-track cassette recorder, a couple of guitars, and a drum machine. So music took a backseat for a while as I focused on other things like academics and writing. Then about twenty years ago, I got a MacBook with GarageBand, and I started fooling around with digital recording. Eventually, various services for sharing music came online, and suddenly there weren’t so many barriers to being a “recording artist.”
I really started getting back into music about ten years ago when I took some courses on music business and technology at the college where I teach. Initially, I was putting music out under various stage names, but at some point I decided to just go ahead and record under my own name. Around the same time, I started a blog where I interviewed other musicians who were basically doing what I was doing, and that opened loads of doors for collaborations with musicians like Brian Lambert, with whom I formed the band the Star Crumbles, and Scoopski, the band I play bass in now. Plus it led to my weekly radio show, the #Tweetcore Radio Hour on AMS Radio, where the sole focus is music by independent musicians that I discover on social media. As a result, I feel like I’ve gone from being a guy who makes music in his basement to a musician who’s part of a global scene, which is pretty cool.
How do you maintain your creative vision?
Something funny happened to me a little while ago. I noticed that one of my songs was getting a lot plays on Spotify, and my first instinct was to double down on that sound—basically bowing to whatever algorithm that particular song happened to be resonating with. But as soon as that thought occurred to me, its opposite also popped into my head: I didn’t get into music to try to adhere to some kind of formula. I did it to have fun. So I decided to just go ahead and make whatever music I felt like making, regardless of what the algorithms wanted. So I set off to create an intentionally idiosyncratic album that wouldn’t fit neatly into any categories. And the kinds of artists I like to work with do the same thing. They have their own ideas about what they want their music to sound like. At the end of the day, you just need to trust that someone somewhere will like the song you’re working on.
