NOTE BY NOTE

Remember how much you disliked music lessons when you were a little kid? Here’s your chance to revisit those magical times.

A veteran piano teacher, contributor to the New York Times and Fortune magazine and adjunct professor of music history at three East Coast universities, Tunstall loves the piano and gets no greater joy than imparting keyboard knowledge to her preteen and teenage private students. (Based on the book’s scant autobiographical sections, she doesn’t seem to have much of a life away from the keyboard.) She introduces us to more than a dozen of her young charges: Mark, who has trouble with minor keys; Christopher, who allegedly loves classical music; Max, who grew tired of classical and was reinvigorated by the Oscar Peterson Trio’s recording of “Summertime”; and so on. In this slim text, each child receives only slight attention. This is problematic, because the kids’ personalities and musical traits very quickly start to run together. Tunstall’s heart is in the right place. It’s evident she loves both her instrument and her students to a great degree, and she’s clearly a kind, giving individual. But her book is too simplistic for musical experts, who will find it covers overly familiar ground, and too heady for casual fans, who will be numbed by the technical material. Those looking for an engrossing memoir will be turned off by the jarring transitions between the autobiographical and the musical.

A self-indulgent exercise that misses the mark as both a teaching tool and a memoir.