When breaking something up into chunks, one does it according to the beats in the measure(s)? So, one is only really paying attention to the beat while playing a chunk? I try to tie my “chunks” to the metronome but I want to confirm that this is the right way to do it.
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Work your way through these https://www.johnklopotowski.com/book-preview#meterstudies
until you can start anything anywhere
I think I do it this way instinctively. But sometimes I found it useful to deliberately change the beat for practice, e.g. instead of playing a 6-note chunk as 6s at 120, do it as 4s at 180.
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I don’t understand jazz, but isn’t the point of a chunk to be pure memorization where one synchronizes on beats in order to play in time?
I claim that if you give me music then I can chunk it, but it will only work fitting into the beats that you chose for your time signature.
Thoughts?
You synchronise to the beat/metronome/time but you don’t have to start the chunk on the beat, you don’t have to phrase a group of 6 note chunks necessarily in 6es, and so on.
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Chunking in synch with the beat is the most intuitive way of doing it, so you could use that as a rule of thumb. It works for most of the fast shredlines for which you need chunking in the first place.
However, sometimes forcing the chunks to fit the beat is contraproductive.
A Song might for example have a super fast beat while the guitarwork isnt that fast.
Random example: Maiden’s Aces High is around 240-250Bpm, but most parts are 4ths and 8ths so tying the chunks to the beat doesnt make much sense there.
Maybe the most “chunkable” picking in the song are the triplets Adrian plays at the beginning of his part of the solo at 2:50 (Iron Maiden - Aces High (Official Video) - YouTube) it works there but for most people, its maybe easier to think of those as sixes. Paradoxically, I only get a good feel for the lick if i focus on the 5th note, as this is the one which seems accented in my ear (so its a “5+1”-chunk to me, i guess).
So, imo, short answer: Yes. long answer: Not necessarily 
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This was almost what I posted in the first place.
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I remember watching a YT vid (I think it was Claus Levin) where he said that sometimes he noticed that Yngwie would play lines that “floated” over the beat rather than be tied to it (although I would think it would be really tough to recreate those licks with accuracy after initially playing them).
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Yeah I remember that video too. A lot of times Yngwie just goes as fast as possible which I love, since it’s common in a lot of extreme metal, too. Really all about the textures/sonic effect than any sort of conservatory-level metronomic precision.
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