Adam Sweet

  "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...

Where bow hair really comes from In 2004 I followed horse tails from a courtyard in Harbin, by train, to the bow hair workshops of Anping. Most players never think about the hair on their bow. I didn't either, until I started selling it. In 2004 I went to China partly on business for Emily's Violins, but mostly to finish something I'd started in Mongolia. I wanted to see where the horses came from, how they were treated, and what happened to the hair between the horse and the bow. Mongolia In Mongolia I went out with a guide to the farms where the horses were being "retired." I didn't know what I'd find. What I saw were healthy horses, gently cared for, eating well and living long lives before the end. That mattered to me, and it still does. Harbin From there I followed the horses back across the border to Harbin, where they were slaughtered and the parts divided up. The tails were left on the bone and washed down with hoses in a cobbled court...

New for Halloween: "The Empty Chair" A slow, minor-key ghost ballad about a verdict read to an empty seat. Download for $1.50 at adamsweet.bandcamp.com . On October 24, 1914, the Atlanta papers ran a story most people would skim past. Georgia's Attorney General, Warren Grice, would stand beside Solicitor Hugh Dorsey to defend the Leo Frank verdict before the state Supreme Court. Frank's new lawyers were arguing that the death sentence was void, because Frank hadn't been in the room when the jury's verdict was read. That detail stopped me cold. A man sentenced to die, and a chair where he should have been sitting. It's the kind of image that sticks with you, and it became my Halloween song. The story behind it In April 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan went to the National Pencil Company in Atlanta to collect her pay. She was found dead in the factory basement the next morning. The factory superintendent, Leo Frank, was arrested, tried, and...

In 1999, my friend Brian Bender and I packed our fiddle and piano, and flew to Cairo to play music as “Fiddle Hill.” It’s still one of the strangest and best weeks of my musical life. How it happened In the late 90s, Brian and I did a few projects with Michael DiMartino and his Gaia World Music Ensemble. Michael was putting together a world music festival through his connections at the Giza pyramids park, right where the famous light show happens. I’m still not sure how he finagled it, but he did. All our expenses were covered, we stayed in a nice hotel, and for one week our job was simply to play. The 1999 festival program: our klezmer set at 3:00 and Fiddle Hill at 4:00 on December 6th, both with Brian Bender, Michael DiMartino and me Fiddle Hill, with the Sphinx photobombing Leaving the hotel Celtic and klezmer under the pyramids We played a mix of Celtic and klezmer music. Irish reels and Jewi...