The Story
Why did I create Up4 Up3?
For my 14th birthday, I got a lovely sunburst Squier Stratocaster guitar. I never much cared for lessons, music or otherwise, but was determined to teach myself how to play. I remember using the "slow" function on my Compaq Windows Media Recorder and painstakingly transcribing each note of songs like Stairway to Heaven and Fade to Black. I figured if I could play those tough songs well, I could play anything. And it worked -- it took years of frustration, blisters, and hand cramps, but eventually, I could play pretty well.
Fast forward a few years to when I decided I wanted to learn how to play the piano. At the time, there weren't many resources that I could find on how to play the piano outside of formal (i.e., boring) training in reading music and music theory. I knew that I didn't want to spend years learning slowly like I did with the guitar, so I was sort of stuck. Coincidentally, my school was hosting a Battle of the Bands, and some of my friends were planning to play in it. They already had a guitarist, but needed someone on keyboard, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to throw myself into the deep end and give myself a (very short) deadline to learn a few songs.
This forced me to learn some basic chords on the piano just well enough to get away with sounding like I knew what I was doing. But as I was learning these chords, I realized there was a really simple pattern that worked for every major and minor chord. This pattern enabled me to derive chords quickly in my head without looking them up, which accelerated my learning so that within a few weeks I could play dozens of songs.
A few more years went by, and I heard so many people say, "Oh I wish I could play the piano like you," or, "I always wanted to learn but it's too late now." Having a full-time job, I wasn't really able to give lessons myself, so I started doing some digging to find classes using this method that I had stumbled upon, thinking there is no possible way I was the first. But I couldn't find anything. The closest courses I found still spent hours and hours of lessons on boring scales and silly old time-y songs that no one ever really wants to play.
In the absence of any resources, I sat down and wrote a book that outlined this method and I started teaching people using it. And it worked. For every single person, whether they had played other instruments or were brand new to music, it worked. Every. Single. Time.
And so, I decided to open a school to teach as many people as possible this amazing method for learning piano.