This paper presentation discusses an on-going case study project where I investigate the life-long experience of music making by adult instrumentalists and vocalists. In my view, music making is much more than a ‘product’ or ‘performance’ of art, and it cannot be reduced to the instrument, repertoire, genre praxis, or technical skills all put together (Cunha & Lorenzino 2012; Small 1998).

So how could we best study people's experience of music making? As Clandinin (2006) puts it, we shape our daily lives by stories of who we and other people are, while interpreting our past in terms of these stories. ‘Story… is a portal through which a person enters the world and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful’ (Clandinin 2006). 

For this on-going construction and re-construction, people do not only use storying but also resort to metaphor, which might be called a story in miniature. Metaphor is defined as an image taken from another area, usually a more concrete domain of life, to give meanings to a more abstract thing from a perspective, in a context. (Cameron 2003, 1-3; Kövecses 2002; Lakoff & Johnson 2003/1980, 5.)

In this study, I commit to follow conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson 2003/1980; Kövecses 2002). For instance, the amateur engagement and orientation within music making is often conceptualized as ‘a path’ (e.g. Juvonen 2000). Related to metaphor, metonymy is also about understanding one thing in terms of another thing which is closely related to it, but unlike metaphor, it is taken from the same domain (Lakoff & Johnson 2003/1980, 35-40).

Researchers such as (Grady 1997; Lakoff & Johnson 2003/1980; Kövecses 2002), who examined the experiential grounding of metaphors and metonymies, noted that these are often combined into larger groupings. They proposed that both metaphors and metonymies may be hierarchically related. Although conceptual metaphors and metonymies are part of our metal resources and thus impact and structure the ways we think about the world, I do not think we should assume that particular conceptual metaphors are similarly present in our domain-specific thinking (e.g. Cameron 2003, 18–19; 239–240), for instance when thinking about music in our lives. Especially the use of complex metaphors and metonymies might vary considerably and be dependent on culture and context.

The research questions of my study are: How do adult amateur musicians story their musicking for life? Secondly, what conceptual metaphors and metonymies do the amateur musicians utilise when storying their musicking? 

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