Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Chunk and Repeat (and then repeat again!)

I think it is a great way to work on pieces.
I'm actually returning to one piece I played a lot but never memorized and I'm "chunking" it to "burn it into my memory" and work on the dynamics more.


Interestingly enough (well, I think it is interesting) the term (and technique) of chunking is also used in language instruction.

Drills and repetitions of parts of standard phrases are used to help build fluidity and obtain more natural intonation.

I often seen parallels between learning piano and learning a language - I have seen that I often transfer things I've learned through teaching ESL into something that works for my own piano study.

This is something my teacher and I have talked about quite often.

Ha ha! No, you're not the only one. My teacher said that if it's not driving your family crazy, you're not practicing right.

There are times when the silen feature really is worth its weight in gold

I read about chunking here on PW and have been using it for a couple of months. I heartily agree with CebuKid and find chunking to be a very effective and efficient method of learning new pieces.

I don't use measures per se as a chunk determinate but rather select rhythmic phrases (usually 4 or so measures).

I also don't use number of reps or time to determine the number of chunk reps. Instead I set a tempo goal and then start practicing the phrase with a metronome set at a very slow tempo (I would be embarassed to say how slow :-). When I can play it with no missteps then I set the metronome up a notch. I repeat this process until I can play the phrase at the goal tempo and then go on to the next phrase. This way I spend little time on easy parts and as long as necessary on the harder bits.

Another advantage of this technique is it quickly lets me know if I selected a piece that is way above my current level. I feel taking a half hour or so to learn a phrase is about right. Any longer and I get bored and frustrated.

Ed

That's what chunking means - if people need to chunk one measure/less all the time, the piece is WAY too hard for them.



And that's how it should be done! Slow should never be embarrassing. Most pianists would argue that slow is harder than fast usually (well, almost usually) because you can't rely on quick muscle memory to do the work for you.

Thanks, Ed. This was very helpful advice - setting a tempo goal and using the metronome. My personal goal as of late has been 4 measures every 1-2 days. This is about the rate that I learn my more difficult material.

I noticed that with easier material that's more within my level, I can learn up to 8-10 measures as a chunk.

In terms of selecting a piece way above my level, all's I do is look at the sheet... if it looks too hard, I'll back off...lol.

Chunking is the only way I've been able to make progress; my problem is finding the discipline to do it! It's more fun (and far less efficient) to try to run larger sections repeatedly. This is actually the biggest challenge I face right now.

Thanks for info on this technique, CebuKid. I'm definitely going to give it a try. I usually just try to play pieces through from start to finish but the more I read on here, the more I realize that this probably isn't a very effecient or effective way to learn music.

Interestingly, I was just reading a transcript of an interview (I believe from NPR or something along those lines) from a few years ago with a gentleman named Henri Delbeau. He had apparently competed in an amateur piano competition that he won and he was explaining that sometimes he would spend an hour and a half just going over a difficult one and a half minute section of Chopin to get it correct. That sounds like chunking to me and it certainly seems to work for him (I watched some of his YouTube videos and they were pretty impressive).

Actually, my take on chunking is you look at things in much smaller pieces than that. Like maybe 15-20 seconds. Maybe the chunks get bigger as you get better?

Because one learns and plays difficult pieces, in sections, that would mean that the ability of the player is not up to par. So it is learn as you go; People don't read words in sections, so if you can't play it through the first couple of times, then it becomes OJT. If that be the case, then it is better to play it from the beguinning every time, because the sight playing is not up to par, not the fact that the piece is difficult. That way you are learning to play the piano while you are learning the piece..Victor Borge cccaisionally played Chopin upside down to fool the audience.

Bad advice. Don't do that.

Also, don't compare words to music. It's not even close to the same thing.

Practicing today I noticed another advantage of chunking. I feel bound to keep nudging the metronome up until I reach my goal. It keeps me practicing longer!

Incidentally the way I do it is to put little V's at the end of each phrase I'm working on and put the tempo goal I've reached at the V. That way I know exactly where I am in the piece. I keep working on each phrase in turn until each V has the little number next to it (this may take days:-). I feel great satisfaction as I see the numbers advancing through the piece.

After all the numbers are in then I go back, brush up each phrase and start working the piece into a unified whole.

Ed

Ed, I know what you mean - it's such a RUSH to have the piece (or even just a couple of measures) sounding "the way it's suppose to."

I've been writing down the dates (right there on the scores) that I have my chunks "memorized". It's not necessarily up to tempo yet, but I have the notes and fingering established. I finished 8 measures this past week, and need to work tomorrow to get it up to tempo.

This is actually the 1st time I've done this type of tracking. For all of my other pieces (particularly my Joplin ones), I only know "approximately" how many months they each took.

PS-I have since abandoned "counting" the number of times I play a chunk..it's too labor-intensive.

Cebukid
The "rush" you describe happens for me too...the thrill of getting it right and comfortable under my fingers is great. Even if it's only a few measures up to tempo I can feel the accomplishment and the music starts to feel solid and real. My poor husband loves to hear me play but hates my practice. I'm sure the chunks aren't as pleasant for him.

One variant on chunking is to practice the piece from end to beginning.

This does not mean learn it backwards, but rather take the phrase that ends the piece and learn it, then the previous next, and so forth.

The advantage with that is that you theoretically know that which you learned first the best, because you have worked on it and thus know it for the longest period of time, so that when you finish learning the piece, when you play it you are always moving into greater strength.

I have done this with long difficult pieces, and it does work. I have heard that concert pianists use this strategy to learn very long pieces.

This also helps with preventing the problem of playing something over and over thru from the very beginning, which for some students is what they call "practicing", but is really "playing", and can degrade the piece if not done with the same care used when learning it.

You can also find the most difficult phrase or section, and work on that first, in conjunction with other easier sections, so that when you finish learning the piece, the hardest section has been worked on the longest.

All in all, practicing correctly is a skill unto itself!

rocket88, thanks for that great advice. I have actually tried that a couple of times, and it took forever.

However, I'm getting better at "reading" and skipping ahead to measures where I haven't mastered the chunk yet; I find that 2 years later, it's less intimidating, and I think it's a function of time and experience, and sight-reading practice. 2 years ago, I was extremely intimidated at reading and skipping ahead to the next section or measure.

One day, I will get there where I can play a "difficult" piece at least almost at tempo prima vista.

I like the idea of learning the piece from the end and moving towards the beginning - I haven't tried that yet, though I have worked on what were (for me) the hardest parts of a piece first.

That "ah, got it" moment is delightful!

I discovered and read this thread with great excitement last week as I had been putting together an arrangement for videoing (posted yesterday as an audio file because I was having trouble with my camera) when to my horror I realized I was still fumbling on a chunk and could not master it no matter how much I tried or slowed it down. I experimented with an entirely new fingering and repeated it about 50 times in one sitting (this is before seeing this thread). I was having some success but not enough when I realized only one hand was an improvement and that I needed to go back to the original fingering in the right hand. This really wasn't a problem because I had played the piece so many more times the other way and what I finally ended up with was the best possible fingering for me.

I found it interesting what CK said about not making the best decisions about fingering when they were younger and being stuck with playing pieces this way because it would be too much trouble to unlearn them. When I studied classical, the thing that stymied me most was fingering -- maybe because I have small hands and some of the sheet fingering never made particular sense to me and didn't seem to fall naturally under my hands. In fact one of the reasons I gave up piano was because I was uncomfortable with fingering.

After playing by ear for a while, I realized that fingering wasn't the problem it once was because I was choosing phrases often because they were comfortable for me and so the notes more often than not naturally fell under my fingers. This carried over into my by-the-sheet playing because I was much more comfortable making decisions and even changing notes or voicings to make them more comfortable for me to play and because I could make them sound better another way. So, I would say that creativity is definitely involved in fingering.

Sometimes when you're arranging you choose fingering one way but you haven't made a final decision about the arrangement of what comes before and after the chunk you've fingered. How those surrounding passages will be played influences the sound or fingering of those chunks and how you want those chunks to sound. Its similar in learning a piece of sheet music. You don't always know how the sound of segments fits in with the whole until you've had a chance to shape the whole a little more, and that will ultimately determine sound and thus the fingering of the chunk.

The chunk and repeat method combined with a little creative thinking saved me by quickly solving the problem I'd been having with the fracture in the piece and allowed me to play it smoothly and in tempo with some new fingering.

Great post, Starr Keys -

Cathy

Thanks a lot, Cathy.