Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson

As one of Tricia's former piano students and friends, I was shocked and awed by how fantastic her book is. I always knew she was a special person with talent oozing from her fingertips when it came to both music and literature but this book blew me away. You don't have to have any knowledge of the piano or any interest in music at all to enjoy this wonderful book. Everyone should read it, I guarantee you'll enjoy it as much as I did! -M.A.

I am fifty-one and about to start my fifth year of piano lessons. I'm slogging in the early - middle intermediate stage. I am also the father of there teenage girls who have studied piano five years, eight years and ten years. This book covers the entire child (or new adult, like me) piano training process from beginning, age seven, to graduating high school, it lays out all the steps. So I am highly recommending this book to parents, who are trying to figure out where the lessons are going and where they will lead, and to intermediate adult students, like me, who are trying to figure out how one becomes an advanced student. The advanced students "are in this because of an attraction to the act of playing that is compelling, deep and inarguable." The "difficult passages must be broken down into their smallest part and played over and over and over." So, for me there is no more skimming and going off for a ham sandwich (playing with my laptop) when my Scarlatti is hard. Sadly, maybe, for parents this desire to master the piano "comes entirely from within". I am not sure my older daughters will ever be advanced, they don't "feel an internal necessity to play". The book was written to adults (I knew every Beatles song and can't imagine playing a duet of American Pie, front to back), and while I think teenage students would certainly sympathize with the Recital chapter, most of the reflections on learning would probably be lost on them. Thank you Tricia Tunstall for sharing your life and explaining the process to us, and for telling me to work harder.

This book is poignant, tender and funny. The author, a piano teacher, describes the wonderful relationships she has built with her students, how they progress and what she learns from them. The book also harks back to the author's own piano teachers, and finally (and most movingly) to her last piano teacher, who was her husband. Anyone would love this book, whether they have any piano experience or not. It is really about the dimensions of personal growth and how they are enhanced by a student-teacher experience, no matter what realm that relationship takes place in. And it's about the something unusual in our world today: a slow, gradual process.

Tricia and I were best friends in high school, and I loved listening to her play the piano. I fumbled on the guitar. We spent hours playing and singing music. It is such a joy to read her beautifully written memoir and meditation on the piano lesson. For anyone who has had a lesson, or wished they had, this is a delightful and touching book.

It wasn't long into Tricia Tunstall's new book, "Note by Note", that I found myself nodding again and again in agreement regarding her experiences as a piano teacher, vis-a-vis mine. We are almost exactly the same age, have taught piano for years and came from similar piano backgrounds...that is, classical music only and nothing EVER popular. So it was with good fortune that I could readily identify with her approach, student interaction and all the things that are associated with piano lessons. By "all the things" I mean that a central point in Tunstall's book is that quite often a piano teacher does more than just teach piano. We are "psychologists" (one mother told me I was cheaper than a shrink), comforters, encouragers, enforcers, and yes, teachers. This is a generational book, I think, and one that can be best appreciated by those around our age (mid-fifties), but certainly not to the exclusion of other generations. Tunstall writes with great narrative style, and with a self-deprecating sense of humor. She covers the essentials of what is to be expected of a student....emergence, mastery, recital, etc. but she offers insight into culture that helps shape her students' (and her own) choice of pieces. The "Lure of Elise" chapter is accurate...every recital seems to have a "Fur Elise" player, and her mild bewilderment of popular music's incursion into traditional teaching mirrors mine. Perhaps we are appendices of the Madame Dmitrieff era...the days when Hanon ruled... but we've learned that jellybeans and The Beatles are often required. Tunstall does include some musically technical points, but they never get in the way of the story. For the reader who has no knowledge of music in general or piano specifically, don't worry. Reading about poor Pia's "hydraulic lift" approach to pedaling.....a laugh out loud moment... will rescue you from any talk of half steps. It would be nice, however, if Tunstall had offered some of her experiences on how she acquires students, how she sets her rates, what she does with students who don't work out, (all of the students in the book seem to have some degree of success) and does she have any former students who come back to visit her years after lessons are over. But given the parameters of what she is trying to accomplish....the focus on the lesson, itself... it is understandable that she needs to keep things as she has presented them. The author ends with a poignant chapter, giving us a final and most personal look at her. One can only gather that it would be wise, beneficial and very good to have Ms. Tunstall as your piano teacher. This is a terrific book and I highly recommend it.