Class piano instruction emphasizes the development of functional skills that allow students to apply their piano abilities across diverse professional contexts. Christensen (2000) investigated functional piano skills employed by band, choral, orchestra, and general music teachers. The results showed that functional piano skills courses are essential for all undergraduate music education majors, regardless of their intended teaching specialization. While harmonization is essential to all these teachers, band and choral directors harmonize the melody using chord symbols, whereas elementary teachers and orchestra teachers need to analyze harmony at sight without chordal notation. Since the K-12 teachers work in different disciplines, the functional piano skills they use differ from one another (Young, 2013). Score reading is more often used by band and choral teachers, whereas elementary school and high school teachers need to be fluent with improvising accompaniment and playing songs by ear. The prerequisite for applying the above-mentioned functional skills is familiarity with them, which encourages K-12 teachers to use the piano more frequently (Christensen, 2000). In higher education, students from diverse majors are often grouped together in the same level of piano class. However, their future career paths demand different functional skills. To accommodate the wide range of skills that must be taught, a fragmented approach has emerged—relying on short excerpts of 8-16 measures. As a result, functional skills are often practiced in isolation rather than in a sequential practice across multiple lessons. The purpose of this study is to investigate an efficient method that teaches all students in the same classroom while fostering a comprehensive understanding of the repertoire studied. The research goal is followed: (1) To explore strategies that support broader functional skills practice while optimizing time use (2) To guide students toward engaging with repertoire in ways that promote deeper musical understanding. The results demonstrate the application of an Uruguayan piece, "La Cumparsita," in seven functional skills: aural listening, ensemble playing, harmonization, accompaniment, improvisation, transposition, and conducting. Functional skills may be taught individually or integrated into a sequential curriculum. This provides instructors with a structured approach to sequencing lessons, with an emphasis on depth. The implications of this study include (1) one carefully chosen repertoire piece can serve multiple functional skills, reducing fragmentation in class piano instruction; (2) curriculum design should emphasize the depth of engagement that builds musical and cultural understanding.