Adam Sweet

I wrote a song about it called "Lyman Road".  Buy & Download for $1.50: https://adamsweet.bandcamp.com/track/lyman-road Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/p7IsHfBJx-Y It began in 1926 when Smith College President William Allan Neilson established the Smith College Nursery School (alongside a Day School). It opened with about 15 students, many of them children of Smith faculty. Organized as a cooperative school by the Institute for the Coordination of Women’s Interests, it offered educational opportunities for Smith graduate students and became part of the education department in 1928. For years it operated as part of the broader Smith College Campus School (with the preschool program at Fort Hill on Lyman Road and kindergarten–sixth grade at Gill Hall). Full-day options expanded in 1992 with infant/toddler and extended-day programs primarily for Smith faculty and staff. In 2003 these elements were reorganized into the distinct Center for Early Childhood Education. The pr...

  Local stories need local outlets. Finding the door is the hard part. Notes from a Granby songwriter on getting the word out in the Pioneer Valley These days I write songs about real western Mass stories: a Hadley witch, a fire chief on a gray Percheron, a WWI sergeant from my own family, and a freylekhs for Valley Light Opera's Fiddler on the Roof . Songs like these belong in local papers and on local radio. So this fall I set out to tell the people who cover the Valley about them. It has been an education. I want to share what I've learned, with respect for the people on the other end, because I think it helps musicians, small businesses, and the outlets themselves. The newsrooms are stretched thin When I emailed my Fiddler song to local writers and arts contacts, most of the replies were automatic out-of-office notes. I don't take that personally. Western Mass has fewer reporters covering more towns than it did when I started playing out. The people who are left are ju...

  "You can't be mystified by AI. You cannot be terrified by it." Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia Celticado on Stage Nearly every musician I know is afraid of AI. I wrote about that recently, and then Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said it plainer than I could: "You can't be mystified by AI. You cannot be terrified by it. You have to find a way to activate yourself to take advantage of it." He calls this the beginning of a new industrial revolution. Not in the production of energy or food, but the production of intelligence. We've been here before I've played fiddle since 1966. I've watched musicians fear the drum machine, the synthesizer, home recording, MP3s, and streaming. Each time, the players who did best weren't the ones who hid. They learned the new tool, kept what made them human, and got back to work. What AI can't do, and what it can AI won't sit in a kitchen and hear your grandmother's story. It won't know why a tune makes you...

Order by December 10 and the finished song is ready to play on Christmas morning. Running late? Give a gift certificate any time up to December 23, and the song follows in January. A gift nobody else can give them Most presents get used up, worn out, or put in a closet. A song about the people you love gets played at every family gathering for the rest of their lives. Maybe it's your grandfather's war story. The farm your family worked for three generations. Your parents' fifty years together. The aunt everybody quotes at Thanksgiving. Tell me the story and I'll turn it into a real, recorded song with your family's names and places in it. I'm Adam Sweet. I've played fiddle since 1966 and write songs about real people and real places in New England. Hear what I make The Ballad of Sergeant Kielty : my grandfather, a WWI sergeant who carried gassed soldiers to safety in France. The Reluctant Hero of Duxbury : my great-grandfather, who rode a horse bareback into...

  A letter from a dad who uses AI every day My son is almost seventeen. This is what I'd want him to know before he picks a path, and what I wish someone had told me at his age about a world that's changing faster than any of us expected. Dear son, You're going to hear a lot of noise about AI in the next few years. Some people will tell you it's going to take every job. Others will tell you it's a fad. Neither is true, and you deserve better than either story. I use AI every day. It does my research, keeps my paperwork straight, and handles chores that used to eat my evenings. I've watched it get better month by month. So I'm not writing this out of fear. I'm writing it because I've seen up close what it's good at, and that tells me a lot about which jobs are about to get squeezed. Here's the honest truth. If I were 18 today, I'd steer clear of these eight careers, because AI...

The songs, the playing, the late nights in the barn with the band: that's ours, and it stays ours. But the routine work that piles up around the music can be automated, and that's exactly where AI agents earn their keep. Last time I wrote that musicians shouldn't be terrified of AI, and that we need to activate ourselves, as Jensen Huang put it. A few of you wrote back with a fair question: "Fine, Adam, but what do I actually do with it?" This post is the answer. It's a hands-on list of the jobs an AI agent can take off your plate, with real examples of what to ask for. You won't find a word in here about writing songs, making beats, or generating vocals. I don't use AI for that and I'm not recommending you do. This is about the other 60% of a working musician's life: the email, the booking, the paperwork, the uploads, the research and the endless chores. First, what's an "agent"? A chatbot answers questions. An agent does things...