About Us

My Story

My name is Adam Wolff. From as early as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the piano. As a very young child, whenever I would hear the piano in a song or see someone who could play the piano, it would blow my mind that one magnificent instrument could be capable of producing such a wide range of sounds that could make me feel such a wide range of emotions. It still blows my mind to this day. I was hooked! I didn’t know it at the time, but my fate was sealed and my lifelong journey of learning and enjoying the piano had begun.

I was lucky to have grown up in a home that had a piano. Sitting in front of the keys and noodling around, coming up with different melodies soon became my favorite thing to do. Although I had no idea what I was doing, It didn’t matter, I was expressing myself through music (at least what I thought was music at the time) and there was no greater feeling in the world to me. I realized early on that I had a good ear and was able to play the basic melody of a song just by listening to it or hearing how it went in my head. All I had to do was find the starting note and I could usually figure out the rest from there. Granted, it was only with my right hand and the most basic stripped down version of the melody, but it was enough for my parents to recognize the song that I was playing.

At the age of 8 years old, my parents enrolled me in my first piano lessons. My first piano instructor, along with many of my future instructors, approached teaching me piano in a very traditional way that included a lot of theory and learning classical pieces from composers like Mozart, Bach & Beethoven…so technically, I guess you can say that I’m classically trained. At the time, especially early on, I wasn’t interested in this style of playing, nor did it compute or make a lot of sense to me. My mom likes to joke with me about how my first piano instructor told her “Adam isn’t really catching on, I don’t think piano is right for him.” And she was right, I wasn’t catching on because it wasn’t the style of playing that I was interested in learning (at least at the time). I wanted to learn how to play like my hero’s Billy Joel and Elton John. As the years went on, my countless hours of practice continued to push my progression and skills further, while my desire to improve as a player continued to grow and grow. Whether I was taking lessons from one of my many instructors (I’ve had around 10 or so) or it was during a period, where I was using what I already knew to continue teaching myself, the piano has always remained a steady, constant, focal point in my life.

My dream quickly evolved into becoming a professional musician (of some sort). I wasn’t too sure about how to make that happen so I ended up going to college and getting my Bachelor of Arts Degree in communications with a minor in music. During that period of my life, (late teens through my mid twenties) I was in a few different bands as the keyboardist/vocalist. Two of my oldest and best friends were in one of those bands with me. We all lived together, were having the time of our lives and were going to change the world with our music! That is, until disaster struck and changed my life forever.

On the night of February 10th 2004 (my dads birthday) I was driving home to where me and my band buddies lived, when I was in a head on collision with a drunk driver. It was a horrific car accident that somehow, by the grace of G-d I survived. My right wrist was shattered and the nerves in my wrist going up into my hand were crushed. I couldn’t move my right hand or any of my fingers at all. My brain would tell my fingers to move and nothing would happen. It was a sickening feeling and I was absolutely devastated. All I could think about was that I will never be able to play the piano again.

After multiple surgeries, I was left with a metal plate and 10 screws in my wrist. (forgive me if you’re ever behind me in line at airport security) I started physical therapy soon after the surgeries and was in PT for over 2 years. For a while I was a very sad person, until one day that sadness turned into a determination to recover. I HAD to regain the ability to move my fingers on my right hand, in order to once again be able to play the piano. I would sit at the piano, using my left hand to physically push down the fingers of my right hand on to the keys. I couldn’t feel the keys because my fingertips were completely numb. Even today they are still somewhat numb. I was relentless and took my PT very seriously making sure to continue all of my hand and finger exercises at home.

As the few years after my accident passed, my wrist, hand and fingers would continue to get stronger and more mobile. With a lot of time, hard work and pain I eventually re-gained about 90% use of my right hand and fingers back, which is where it is today. When my recovery reached this point, I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do on the piano, because of all of the time that I lost with my injury. I basically had to re-learn how to play with my right hand. My practice frequency increased, as well as my inner drive which eventually took me back to the top of my game.

As much as I tried to avoid it, I ended up in the corporate world for about 10 years. I had a full on career working a job that I wasn’t passionate about and throughout the years became more and more unhappy with. It reached a point where I could take it no longer and started exploring my options. In 2011, I ended up going back to school for Audio Engineering. With piano and music in general playing such an important role throughout my life, I had always been very interested in learning how to record the original music that I would write. I’ve written many original songs over the years that besides a horrible quality recording on a cassette tape, I had never been able to truly capture and hear what they sound like. I also felt strongly that being in the audio field could definitely present an opportunity to build a profession in music that I could somehow incorporate my piano playing into. Being in school for Audio Engineering invigorated and inspired me. I graduated in 2012 as a certified audio engineer and immediately started doing side work in the Live sound industry. I built stages and ran sound for everything from bands to corporate speaking events. During this time, I also started building a professional recording studio in my home called Howling Wolff Recording Studio. My clients would rave about how professional their recordings sounded. In fact, the business was doing so well that in 2014 I officially resigned from my corporate job to focus on the studio business full time. I loved and still love it! My little home studio just surpassed 10 years in business. One of my favorite things about running the studio is that many of my clients hire me to play piano on their recordings!

Around the same time that I had resigned from my corporate job to focus on the studio full time, a family friend asked me if I would teach their son piano. Believe it or not, I had never considered teaching piano. However, I was open to it and gave it a shot. It ended up being another turning point in my life, because I fell in love with something that I never realized I would love doing…teaching piano! I found that I was able to break down and explain techniques of playing in a way that students of all ages could easily understand and replicate, all while keeping the lesson light and fun! I also found that I got great joy and satisfaction from building up my students’ confidence and seeing them progress and truly enjoy learning how to play the piano. As time went on I started teaching more students, particularly beginner students. I love working with beginners because they’re a blank canvas without any bad habits that have to be corrected. We can just start from the absolute beginning and build good habits from the very start. Over the years, I’ve worked with students of all ages. From as young as 5 to as old as 87. One of the most important things that I’ve learned as a piano instructor is that ANYONE can learn to play the piano. It’s NOT a talent that you have to be born with.

Soon after I started teaching piano, in late 2015 I met the love of my life, Jennifer, and in 2019 she gave me the honor of calling her my wife. At the time of writing this in 2023, we now have a beautiful and rambunctious 3 year old boy named Paxton. I have truly been blessed in my life. I love my family and the life that we are building together. With running the recording studio and giving piano lessons full time, as well as being a husband and a father, the biggest challenge that I’ve found as a piano instructor is that I’m very limited in how many students I’m able to teach at one time. I’ve been teaching piano for about a decade now and have found that the students who are serious about learning the piano and put in the necessary practice time, continue to progress and succeed. In experiencing this, I’ve realized that my methods, style and approach to teaching continues to produce results time after time. However, I’m only one person and can only take on a handful of students at a time. I wanted to have a much bigger impact and help a lot more people who wanted to learn how to play piano.

In Sept. of 2020, amidst the Covid pandemic, I came up with an idea that would once again, become a huge turning point in my life. The idea was to create an online piano course specifically catered to the absolute beginner student. It was then that Discovering Piano was born. I spent the next 3+ years developing the course. I would work on it sometimes in the middle of the night, or the early morning, basically any time that I could, everyday without fail. The course is called “How To Play Piano From The Ground Up”. It’s the culmination of my 35+ years of experience and knowledge studying, practicing, playing, performing and teaching piano. The premise of the course is that it doesn’t matter what age you are, or if you have zero experience with the piano or if you’ve previously tried to learn piano, either through lessons or by teaching yourself but have been unsuccessful. All anyone needs is the desire to learn, willingness to practice and patience. If a person has those three traits, they are going to learn how to play piano from me in this course. My ultimate goal for every student who takes the course is to provide a very simple, clear and easy to understand path. One that will take them from zero experience all the way up to playing at an early intermediate level, all while having a lot of fun in the process and progressing at their own pace.

I consider myself to be very fortunate to have this platform that allows me to reach and impact so many people. At the end of the day, I’m just a regular guy who loves and is passionate about anything piano related. To be able to share that passion and enthusiasm with the world, while educating and influencing others is my dream come true and something that I am eternally grateful for.