Using music-making as data is a potentially rich but underexplored topic in American music educational research. If music-making is a matter of musical knowledge-in-action (Elliott, 1995), then it makes sense that music education researchers would collect and analyze music-making data to provide important insights into the music learning process as well as the very nature and impact of music-making. However, music education researchers who plan to use music-making data are largely left to their own devices, as this is seldom addressed as a separate topic in research books. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the uses of music-making as data in qualitative research in American music education and to offer suggestions about how to collect music-in-the-moment data (process-of-music-making data; product-of-music-making data; and meanings-of-music-making data) and analyze music-making data for different purposes (verbal and nonverbal interactions; musical and nonmusical responses; and social interactions/connections and individual responses).