Which part was nonsense? I’d learned the history of the piano back in tuning school. It developed from the earlier harpsichord. Its keyboard did not have eighty-eight keys. And there was not even a prototype of the harpsichord back in ancient Greece. It was in Beethoven’s time, about two hundred years ago, that the piano replaced the harpsichord. At first it had anywhere from sixty-eight to seventy-three keys. Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ has the inscription For harpsichord or piano. People believe that Beethoven changed his primary instrument from the harpsichord to the piano only between composing the first and second movements. It was at this time that the keyboard became fixed at eighty-eight keys.

Was eighty-eight really the number of the constellations? Or was the point about astronomy and music being the first fields of study itself a bit of nonsense? I didn’t know any of the facts, but went ahead and opened my notebook anyway. The number of constellations, the number of keys. As I wrote down eighty-eight, I noticed Mr Akino leaning across the desk towards me.

‘So you’re still taking notes, eh?’ He peered into my notebook, and I hastily snapped it shut.

I was embarrassed. I was about to start my third year as a tuner, yet was still noting down basic information like a rank amateur.

‘I think that’s fine,’ Mr Akino said blandly. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d been as diligent at taking notes as you. When you first start a job you see and hear all kinds of important things. If only I’d taken notes I might have made faster progress. It wasn’t so much that I disliked the time and effort required, but rather that I was operating under a misconception. I figured mastering technique meant learning it through your body.’ He stared at the closed notebook and added, ‘It’s an illusion. The idea that your ears will remember, your fingers will learn – it’s all an illusion. This is what remembers it all.’ Mr Akino pointed an index finger at his head.

So it wasn’t just me. I’d also been sure that you learned technique physically, through your body. So much time passing and still being unable to master the essentials made me half give up, figuring I just didn’t have a musical physique. I continued to take notes, not wanting to waste any time gnashing my teeth.

‘You can’t just write it down, though,’ Mr Akino said. ‘You have to remember it. It’s like memorizing historical dates. At some point you’ll suddenly grasp the big picture.’