Music


Hi, I'm Adam Sweet. I own Verve, and I'm the songwriter and musician behind Verve Music. This is where my own music lives. I write the tunes, play them and record them in my home studio in Granby, Massachusetts, mostly on fiddle and mandolin, with guitar, viola, mandola, mandocello, bouzouki and a few other instruments when a tune calls for them.

How I got here

I picked up the violin in 1962 and the mandolin in 1980, and I've been writing songs since 1985, mostly for local bands. My first recording came in 1989 with Maple Ridge, the bluegrass band I played with until 2001. After that came Swift River, an originals band where I mostly played mandolin, then Woodkerne, an Irish and Celtic band, and Celticado, a duo that played a lot of wedding ceremonies. Along the way I earned a master's degree in ethnomusicology, and between 1978 and 2005 I traveled for music through Ireland, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Egypt, South Korea and China. All of that shows up in what I write now, sometimes on purpose and sometimes when I'm not looking.

What you'll hear

A lot of my music grows out of Irish, Celtic and bluegrass traditions: reels, fast instrumentals and songs that trade the melody back and forth the way a good band does. But I don't stay in one lane. I've played everything from classical chamber music to klezmer, blues and electronic music, and the catalog reflects it. On Bandcamp you'll find it under project names like Quabbin Valley Folk, Dál Riata Còmhlan, The Americana Project and Cybernetic Fusion. It all comes out under one name now, Verve Music, because it all comes from the same place.

Start here

  • Shamrock Dance & Friends is the best introduction. It's three tracks for $3: two medleys of original reels and one bluegrass instrumental that refuses to slow down. You can also get the tracks one at a time.
  • Shamrock Dance is a fiddle-led medley of three original reels with the drive and lift of a good session. $1.
  • Cambridge to Connemara is another set of three reels, new tunes written in an old language. $1.50.
  • High Ridge Sprint jumps the fence into bluegrass, a fast instrumental built on fiddle and mandolin duets. $1.50.
  • The October Reel Set is a set of reels.

Songs with a story

Not everything is a dance tune. The Space Between the Walls, with harp and violin, started with my search for a fellow musician who went missing and turned into a song about people who disappear in plain sight. You can read how it came about in this post. Other recent releases include Who's Watching The Machines?, The Woods Remember Me, You Ought To Know, River Under Thought, Room to Grow and Leaf Peepers. There are more than 370 releases on my Bandcamp music page, so there's plenty to dig through.

The older recordings

I've also been putting up recordings from the bands I played in over the years, including Maple Ridge, on Audius and SoundCloud. If you heard me play somewhere in New England in the 1990s or 2000s, there's a good chance it's in there. I wrote about going back through those recordings in Finding the Verve Again.

How I write and record a song

Most of my songs start with a topic I care about. It might be an article I came across, something from my alma mater, or a note from a colleague. I write down some words, then get out my mandolin or guitar and put some chords under them. Once in a while I'll use a music app, like Google's or Suno, to brainstorm a melody idea, but mostly I don't. Either way, the words are mine, and every note you hear on the finished track is played or sung by real people.

When I have a click track I like, I put it on Dropbox and reach out to the musicians I'd like to have on it. Not everyone can say yes every time, so I keep a roster of colleagues. The ones who are in ask for the link, I text or email it to them, and I give them time to record their parts. I've found those players in all kinds of ways: through my years of playing out, on BandMix and ReverbNation, and on social media.

When their tracks come back, I download them from Dropbox, clean them up in Pro Tools, and do the final mix in Audacity. Then it goes up on Bandcamp.

Made by real people

Everything on Verve Music is played and sung by real musicians. I'll sometimes use an app to sketch out an idea, and I use digital tools to clean up and mix, the way any studio does, but no AI plays or sings on the finished music.

Where to listen and follow

Musicians, send me your music

If you play and record your own music, I'd like to hear it. Submit your music here. It's free. And if you need a fiddle or mandolin part on your own recording, or want to write something together, the Contact page has how to reach me.

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