SUPERCHARGE YOUR PIANO PRACTICE

www.bestpianotips.com | Bonus

4. Chunking
Chunking is the most basic and fundamental practice
strategy. It’s always the first strategy you’re going to
want to use when you first start learning a piece. It is also
a technique that can be combined with all the other
practice strategies in this book.
What Exactly is “Chunking?”
Chunking is when you break part of a piece into small sections
and practice them individually. Once you know each small
section of your piece well, you can put the sections together
and play the whole piece well.
Chunking allows you to narrow your focus on only the parts
that really need to be practiced. For example, lets say you
have a 10 measure section that is pretty easy, except for
measures 5-6. If you practice the entire section 10 times, you
waste time practicing the easy measures, time which could be
devoted to practicing measures 5-6.
If you use chunking, on the other hand, you might only need to
practice the easy measures 3 or 4 times, which leaves you a
lot more time to drill in measures 5-6.
Main Benefits of Chunking:
• Enables Rapid Learning
• Increases Continuity
• Improves Memorization
SUPERCHARGE YOUR PIANO PRACTICE
Chunking: Step by Step
Step 1: Choose a Section of Your Piece
Find a part of your piece to work on. I suggest practicing the
most difficult section of your piece first while your mind is
fresh.
Step 2: Break it up Into Smaller Sections
How small should the sections be? It’s going to be different for
each situation. Harder sections require smaller chunks, easier
sections can use larger chunks. On average, chunks will
probably be around two to four measures. After a while, you’ll
get a feel for how long they should be.
Step 3: Write Them in Your Music
I’d highly suggest actually marking the chunks in your music.
It’ll help you stay focused. You can use brackets or just put a ‘
where each section starts and ends. If you’re learning a song
by ear or a tutorial, print off a lyric sheet and mark your
sections in there.
Step 4: Practice Each Chunk
Simply practice each chunk until it is solid (hands separate
first of course!). The nice part about chunking is that the easy
chunks won’t take long to learn, so you don’t have to spend as
much time on them. That frees you up to spend a lot of time
on the tough sections.
www.bestpianotips.com | Page 16

Step 5: Repeat the Process with Larger Chunks
Now you can start combining your chunks into bigger chunks.
The bigger chunks will be a lot easier to learn since you put in
the work learning each individual little chunk. Keep building up
larger and larger chunks until the chunk encompasses the
entire song or section.
Variations to Chunking
Using Overlapping Chunks
Sometimes, even when you can play each chunk perfectly by
itself, it might be hard to put them together because you still
need to learn the transition between chunks. The best way to
do this is to create another set of chunks that overlap the first
chunks:
So in this example, if your original chucks were A, B, C, and D,
you could then practice chunks E, F, and G to cover all the
transitions (by the way your chunks will probably be bigger
than this, it was just easier to fit this graphic into the book. You
get the point though).
You can also try just creating your original chunks so that
each chunk overlaps a couple of notes with the next chunk
and the one before it. So for example, the last couple notes of
SUPERCHARGE YOUR PIANO PRACTICE
section A would be the same notes as the first couple notes of
section B. And the last couple notes of section B would be the
same as the first couple notes of section C and so on.
The Two Note Chunk
For the really difficult sections, I like to break it down into
super small chunks, sometimes consisting of only two notes.
For example, if I have a large leap in one of my hands, I’ll just
practice the two notes in that leap over and over until it’s solid.
Or if there’s a section with a tough fingering, like playing a
third with fingers 24 and moving to a third played with 35.
If there’s a passage with really tricky fingering I’ll often times
run the Two Note Chunk strategy over the entire section. So
you practice the first two notes over and over, then you
practice notes 2 and 3 over and over, then you practice notes
3 and 4 over and over, and so on until you’ve completed the
entire section.
Caution: Watch Your Fingering
When using Chunking, be careful to use the correct fingering.
Make sure the fingering from the chunk you’re working on
makes sense next one, otherwise you’ll end up with a bunch
of chunks that won’t flow smoothly into one another. You
might want to write in the fingering at the beginning of each
chunk to make sure you practice it correctly.
www.bestpianotips.com | Page 17
 SUPERCHARGE YOUR PIANO PRACTICE

Wrap Up and Key Points Now on to the next chapter, where we’ll go over my number
one practice technique to build in rock-solid muscle memory.
Chunking is the most fundamental of all the practice
strategies. You’ll use it as the first strategy in almost every
piece you learn. Here are the key points to remember:

• Chunking is when you break large sections of your

piece into smaller sections to practice individually
• Make Your Chunks small enough so that you can make
some noticeable progress on them in each practice
session
• Piece your Chunks together by combining them into
larger Chunks or using Overlapping Chunks

Video Lesson
Want me to explain it in a video? No problem, the link’s right
here:
Want to review? Here’s the link to the video lesson:
http://www.bestpianoclass.com/Vid-Lessons

And if you don’t have the video lessons and would like to
upgrade, go here:
http://www.bestpianoclass.com/GetVideos

And remember, you’re ALWAYS welcome to contact me if

there’s something in this chapter you’re confused about:

Email: zach@zachevansmusic.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/zachevansmusic
Twitter: @zachevansmusic

www.bestpianotips.com | Page 18