Chunking as a practice method

One of the exciting things about CTC is the evolutionary process you see unfolding. A lot of ideas are developing so rapidly here. Last year, especially after having spent some serious time with site content as well as some of Troy’s YouTubes, I felt like “chunking” was a big deal. But as a general topic for discussion, it seems to me that it’s receded.

I don’t just mean the basic idea of chunking (rethinking a multi-note lick as in fact being a single sequence of notes, that you burn into muscle memory and trigger with ease). I mean chunking as a practice method - i.e. massive repetition of the lick at a comfortable speed (and with correct mechanics - always and only with correct mechanics!) until the speed comes on its own.

[I’ll admit that it could be I’m assigning more importance to chunking as a practice method than CTC actually ever did. Someone will set me straight if so.]

Wondering whether the brain-trust here is thinking of it as less important than before… or maybe it’s been subsumed by other concepts - still there in the background, but less central… or neither, and the spotlight practice-wise has just temporarily moved onto other important ideas, with chunking yet remaining a key component in the quest for speed.

As always, I’m interested in what everyone’s got to say. But @Troy, would you also share your thoughts?

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Chunking is the cornerstone of hand synchronizastion and it’s kind of amazing that there is not a lesson on it right up front in the Primer. But we only have so many hands on deck here and the motion stuff / tests was more important. We have some more of those to do, but after that batch we’ll start filling in other gaps like chunking.

No I don’t consider it a whole practice method so much as just the idea of using landmark pickstrokes to lock hands together. That’s really it. But not everybody understands this and yes we should have a video on it.

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Thanks for that clarification.