Enhancing our understanding of students' experiences during their studies in higher music education is essential to supporting them as they cope with their specific workloads in studying music. This study provides a detailed description of and model for how music students' lived experiences can be approached and analysed through transcendental phenomenology. The specific research goal was to explore what engaging in music means to music students in relation to their experienced workload. This research-based model may be utilised to inform developmental work and future research, such as processing and incorporating students' feedback into improvements in teaching and learning environments.