Audiobook - Motherless Child (Book) - 9/26/2019 9:05:33 AM
Congrats on your audiobook. I can see that you did not do the narrative yourself. I am finding that my voice is not as good as it used to be, so I would use a better voice, myself.
People have asked if my books are audiobooks. I really should have gone ahead and tried to get them published that way. But I keep dragging my feet. I have found that my computers and my Dragon system can actually read back my dictation in my voice. Or, I can have my work read by the computer in several voices. What little I have stopped to listen to, has been quite good. Providing pauses and other nuances that a good reader would provide. That is one reason I haven't gone ahead with creating an audiobook. If I have the book online, computers can read it back. No humans required AI is getting that good!
Ron
Code Name Games - Thirty-Six Symbol Recognition Games for Elementary Music (Book) - 11/4/2017 6:59:15 AM
I admire your versatility and creativity. It takes great discipline to write good music (I never had it) akin to computer coding. Instilling music symbols, like language, into young minds is the best way to have them remember those symbols their entire lives. I think that's why your books are so original and precise in their presentation. Discipline.
Ron
Solfege Town (Book) - 8/24/2015 9:18:09 PM
In the Introduction to Solfege Town, Adam Cole writes: "There are many ways to teach music, but the best way is to engage the imagination."
In this innovative book, Adam Cole takes us on a tour of an imaginary place called Solfege Town where music teachers are encouraged to instruct students to create musical stories using Solfege, a system of symbols representing tones in the seven note scale. Solfege Town is a sequence of music activities that help students understand how the notes of the scale relate to one another. Adam Cole is a non-linear thinker, and his thought process is apparent this book. He goes beyond the Solfege syllables (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti) and assigns a physical "place" for each note. The places assigned for the notes are: SO = bus station; MI = school; LA = hotel; DO = home; RE = path; TI = highway; FA = ticket counter. He draws a picture for each place and takes the student on a musical journey that is concrete and visual.
Each chapter introduces a note. He begins the first chapter with the dominant SO rather than the tonic DO because it is "the most useful of all the signs". As the dominant getting ready to move to the tonic, it suggests possibilities and has an edge over the dominant DO. "A song made up of only the tonic would be very flat and lifeless. On the other hand, a song composed with just the dominant suggests more to come." Music is dynamic and wants to move. By suggesting that the first note, SO, is a bus station, students learn that SO is a note that can take them to any other note easily. The dominant is special in that it can resolve its movement in any direction with equal effectiveness. By starting with a bus-station in town, the teacher plants the idea that the notes are different kinds of places to go and not simply houses on a street. Each note has a function, like people in a family or a business.
Every chapter contains songs and games that reinforce the note in discussion. Adam Cole is great at explaining activities with precision. The first appendix contains songs Adam Cole wrote for Solfege Town. The second appendix contains traditional songs featuring same concepts taught in the book. These songs are very simple and easy as well as interesting and intriguing.
The purpose of Solfege Town is to transform abstract musical notions into more visible visual tools. Students are taught music composition by traveling on a bus from place to place around town. They tell stories this way. The teacher writes down the musical notes represented by each place, which sequentially form a melody. The students "see" each note before they hear it. It would not come to a surprise if many melodies come out sounding like pentatonic scales. I have never seen music pedagogy approached in this manner -- visually representing Solfege. It is a fun way to learn about musical notes. This new approach to Solfege is unique and mind blowing. And it works!
The Poem I Will Never Write (Poetry) - 11/2/2025 11:14:56 AM
This life is definitely almost too huge to deal with. Well penned, Adam, and enjoyed.
The Poem I Will Never Write (Poetry) - 9/21/2025 9:50:38 AM
You wrote it anyway, good for you.
I find your background and your writing very interesting and one that I would never be able to live as well as you have lived it.
Thinking about my failure at playing the piano at six years old when I should've been a child prodigy.
Instead, you are and were a piano teacher extraordinaire, followed closely by great writer of wonderful tales.
Ron
For Sure (Poetry) - 9/21/2025 9:45:01 AM
Very profound. I'm with you. It is highly unlikely that there is an afterlife even though I've read recently that there is some Brain activity that apparently continues in cyber space (?).
And the idea of reincarnation is a nice form of storytelling but would only be our elements and compound reused by some other living creature that we might call "our reincarnation."
For most of us, it is the semen and an egg, that multiplies the chance that anyone is remembered down the the generations of humankind. The other way, the route that I have taken, because my healthy semen never found a place to create a child, is through my literary work. Hopefully not buried in the database of cyberspace, but frequently found by AI and used to teach future generations about what it was like to deal with the challenges of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Ron
Let There Be Lies (Poetry) - 9/21/2025 9:16:24 AM
Good to see you posting it again, Adam. The other day I was shocked to see that you commented on something I wrote in 2002, one of my first postings here.
I look at this two ways. First, what is happening in Israel with its view of Gaza. Or what is happening here in the United States with ideology overcoming reason.
It's what you believe rather than what is the truth?
Ron
We All Fall Down (Poetry) - 9/15/2023 8:10:18 PM
Great usage of words. Powerful imagery!
Sandie
P.S. Hi Adam: Have you forgotten to categorize or rate this poem? I ask that is because I ca not find this poem on the Poetry wall. I've found this from the email notification authorsden had sent me.
Why Don't You Shut Up (Poetry) - 9/5/2023 10:33:48 AM
It's true, we live where we choose to, so often we have the ability for change. We should listen to our heart, not negative thoughts and people. Well penned, Adam.
Why Don't You Shut Up (Poetry) - 6/1/2023 6:17:51 PM
I was attracted by the title of this poem. However, this reads like a message to someone you know whom I don't, and I won't pretend to know what this is about or what that person's life may be like, since we all live a different lifestyle.
However, this is an effective poem, expressive in great choice of words!
Sandie
Why Don't You Shut Up (Poetry) - 6/1/2023 1:50:02 PM
From what I read I think you are writing about what a teacher told you about your talent. So many talented people have that person in their life that holds them back and they never get to flourish with what they were given immediately that was so spontaneous and unique.
If I'm wrong, forgive me. I often have misinterpreted poems and was treated badly on standard tests where I had to interpret poems using multiple-choice answers.
Ron
Why Don't You Shut Up (Poetry) - 6/1/2023 10:20:58 AM
Well expressed poem. I can relate to this as a trauma survivor. I like the ending a lot. I improve, I sometimes exceed my expectations, but then I snap back. Not much. But enough to remind me I will always carry these memories that will make me feel pain now and then. But also I feel gratitude over the beautiful treasures that life has granted me since then.
I Need (Poetry) - 5/10/2020 6:27:07 AM
An inspiring poem! Yes, one has got to move forward, unafraid.
Sandie
The Window (Poetry) - 11/28/2019 12:56:10 PM
I would assume that escaping teaching piano lessons would be like me escaping writing. I may just do that one day, but it will be with great regret that I will be no longer able where I once ran so free.
Ron
The Window (Poetry) - 11/28/2019 9:58:14 AM
Some self-made prisons are hard to break through,
but once the walls come down and the door is kicked open,
freedom is a horse running wildly through green meadows,
it cannot be restrained,
nor can the walls and the door be mended.
Sandie
I Need (Poetry) - 10/12/2019 11:51:10 AM
If I read you right, I believe you are writing about opening up more to the world and letting it come in, unafraid, so that you will learn more and experience more.
As long as one is not hurt by this opening up, and generally that is the case. All I can say is more power to it and long life to this poem.
Ron
Stretched (Poetry) - 2/7/2019 9:54:38 AM
..''A world without a world'' I LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Liana Margiva
Stretched (Poetry) - 1/17/2019 2:22:15 PM
Last two lines freaked me out . . . Fantastic!
Stretched (Poetry) - 1/17/2019 9:59:13 AM
From your lamentations, I would say she is quite a challenge--and a very good way.
Ron
Stretched (Poetry) - 1/16/2019 6:09:38 AM
What a gorgeous poem, Adam. A tribute to a love beyond love.
Stretched (Poetry) - 1/15/2019 11:53:07 PM
I love jazz, and of course poetry. Your musical talents shine through your poetic choice of words. I am touched. I just became a fan of yours.
Sincerely, John Michael
Because I Have Been Lost (Poetry) - 12/19/2018 8:45:06 PM
I have trouble in understanding this poem. Perhaps Ron's assumption may be right.
Sandie
Because I Have Been Lost (Poetry) - 12/18/2018 10:25:40 AM
You are writing about the "found," in the lost and found. Says a lot about experience and the wisdom derived from it.
Ron
11 (Poetry) - 5/23/2017 9:15:10 PM
That was an indescribable experience. The terror alone words cannot express. I pray that it never happens again and we can live in peace. Amen
11 (Poetry) - 5/23/2017 9:18:41 AM
You bring memories of what it was like. Fortunately, I was not there. But I wrote a poem about the rest of us that experienced from afar… I Witness. Describing how we could witness through the power of television all that is going on as though we were there in real time.
Ron
Expect the Unelected (Poetry) - 6/28/2016 6:10:52 AM
Filled me with thoughts of what we think we are. Interesting.
Ron
The Truth (Poetry) - 6/27/2016 4:58:55 AM
Yes, I find this form rather strange. Kind of like a Salvador Dali painting with everything out of place and droopy.
Perhaps it is because the truth is too hard for most people to take. So they'd rather live the lie instead.
Ron
The Truth (Poetry) - 6/27/2016 3:30:49 AM
Truth . . . Yes, it WILL set you free . . . You have a strange outlook on life . . .
