The second important link in Busoni's technical “system” is the so-called method of technical variants. Following Liszt's legacy again, Busoni counsels every pianist, in working out a difficult passage, to invent textural variants for them and use these as helpful exercises and etudes. As examples, he offers his own technical variants to Preludes I, II, III, V, VI, XV, and XXI of Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier of Bach, to Etudes, Op. 10, nos. 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9 and to Prelude, Op. 28, no. 3 of Chopin.

This method of technical work is echoed by other great pianistic authorities, but is not accepted in the “piano classes in all of Europe.” It demands of the students a greater than usual creative initiative and more independence of thinking; in addition, along with other aspects of Busoni's pedagogy, it demolishes the academic separation between theory and practice, between training for performance and analysis and compositional exercises. For Busoni, as for Liszt, the “analysis of a problem” is the best pianistic exercise, altering the texture, transcribing is the best analysis; only by changing something do we comprehend it and only by comprehending something do we master it. “Only in the mirror of the variant are the interesting features of the original uncovered,” says the epigraph to Busoni's variants to Chopin's Etudes.

As has been said before, the method of variants is not accepted by all teachers.