About

Hello!  I'm Adam Sweet.  You have stumbled upon my personal blog.  I post articles, poetry and information here of interest to me, my family and friends.  Students may use it as a reference as I often post articles relevant to their progress and process as well.

I'm a classically-trained violinist. I've been teaching adults and teens how to play the violin and mandolin since 1986.  My first actual teaching job where I wasn't teaching out of my home was at the Fretted Instrument Workshop in Amherst, MA.  In '95, I started my tenure at Downtown Sounds in Northampton.  In '96 when the Northampton Community Music Center opened, I was asked to start up a traditional music and mandolin orchestra program.  In '99, I was hired by the Keene Institute of Music and Related Arts (KIMRA) to offer a mandolin orchestra and traditional music program in southern NH.  

My wife and I moved to South Hadley from Amherst in 2009, where I founded Sweet Music, a music studio offering private lessons in person and online, group classes, a mandolin orchestra (The South Hadley Mandolin Orchestra), and mandolin group classes.  In 2012 with cofounders Will Melton and Josh Bell, we founded Mandolin New England, Inc. a 501(c)3 nonprofit music organization.

We moved to Granby in 2018, where I started the Mandolin Academy, offering private lessons on mandolin, mandola, mandocello and mandobass as well as classes for beginners, advanced players and professionals.  

I own a 7 acre piece of land in Granby.  Over the years, I have been slowly converting it into an organic farm with an 18 tree orchard (peaches, plums, pears, apples, jujubes and other fruit trees), raspberry bushes (at least 35 of them), and blueberry bushes.  Six years ago, I built a chicken coop for the chickens we brought with us from South Hadley, and they were promptly eaten by black bears, coyotes and eagles.  I may have chickens again, but I will have to build a concrete vault for them, obviously!

In addition to teaching and playing music, I provide bookkeeping, sales and marketing support services to several long-term clients in western MA, NH and VT.  

I am very interested in AI, also known as Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs) and have explored their capabilities intensely.  I am a proficient "prompt engineer", and know how to use the generative AI for images, music and video.  It's an excitinig new world.