Chunking¶
Summary: Take one long phrase or idea, and break it up into chunks, with clearly identified "target notes" at the start of each chunk. When practicing and playing, aim for these target notes. ☆☆☆☆☆
“Chunking” streamlines your thought process, letting your brain move faster across larger units, resulting in your hands and fingers moving faster.
For example, take this scalar lick, strictly alternate picked, which you’re aiming to play at 170 bpm:
120 bpm
If you try to play this passage without dividing it into several groups with regular accents, then each movement of each single finger would need a separate impulse from the central nervous system:
Too much thought = confusion.
The faster and smoother we want to play, the greater the number of tones that have to be united into one “impulse group”. Each impulse controls several actions, and our brain deals with fewer thoughts and less noise.
For this particular lick, it makes sense to group things on every beat, so each impulse is associated with four notes:
Where to chunk?¶
Guideline: Chunk where you want the accents to go.
In the above example, I chunked on each beat, because it makes sense to slightly, even imperceptibly, accent each beat. Had I chunked on each string, the lick would come out differently:
That’s just a guideline. It may make more sense to chunk things as dictated by your hands.
Practicing chunks¶
Since each chunk is a single “impulse group”, you can practice them individually, and ensure you can play each of them with ease. Add a note to the end so you end on a strong beat, otherwise it just feels incomplete! For example:
Chunk 1
Chunk 2
By accenting the first note, you’re reinforcing the chunk. Adding these accents is great for other reasons: if you lack consistent accents, your listeners, and your brain, can get lost. Good accents can help structure the sound, improving your timing, and you actually end up sounding tighter, faster, better. When you work on any exercise, scale or passage, I recommend dividing it into clearly accented groups like this.
Once you have individual chunks down, take them two at a time and join them, smoothing out the transition, so they become one larger chunk. Then gradually add longer chunks to the chain.
Joining chunks
When joining chunks, you can either repeat attempts one after the other, or take some time – a full measure or two of rest – before starting the next one. I generally prefer the latter, because it prevents mindless mechanical practice, it just takes discipline to stop.
Larger chunks for faster music¶
If, like an utter madman, you wanted to play this lick at some ungodly tempo, you’d want to make your chunks even chunkier:
Outlining¶
Chunking simplifies your thoughts: rather than think of many individual notes, you can deal with larger logical groups.
You can use this concept during practice of tricky sections by playing just the first note of each chunk. This helps your ear and brain clearly hear the targets it has to hit. For the lick above, that looks like this (the dot above the note means staccato – very short):
Outlining
Then you can gradually introduce chunks, for example:
Outline with chunks