The 5-Axis System of Film Music

23 Sept

Giving notes to your composer can be surprisingly challenging.

When we talk about art, we don’t necessarily perceive things in the same way. We may use the same words to describe completely different ideas, and sometimes the more nuanced the language we use, the greater the risk of accidentally communicating something other than what we intended.

This is particularly true with music.

Telling a composer that a cue should feel more intimate, more powerful, more desperate, or more epic might seem perfectly clear to you. But what does that actually mean musically?

Should the music become quieter? Should it use fewer instruments? Should the harmony change? Should the tempo increase? Should the melody become more prominent?

There are countless ways of interpreting the same instruction.

That’s why, when giving notes about a score, I find it much more useful to think in practical and relatively unambiguous terms.

Over the years, I’ve developed a framework that I call the 5-Axis System of Film Music. It breaks down the main dimensions that determine how a cue relates to the picture, and it provides a useful vocabulary for discussing music with your composer—even if you have no musical training whatsoever.

The five axes are:

Amount of music information
Scale
Narrative intent
Style
Internal coherence

Let’s look at each one.

1. Amount of Music Information

The first axis concerns how much musical information is happening over a given amount of time.

In practical terms, think about the number of musical events happening per second.

A fast, busy cue generally contains more musical information than a slow, sparse one. This can be influenced by things such as:

The number of notes or rhythmic events
Percussive activity
Tempo
The number of simultaneous musical layers
How frequently musical events occur

In other words, this axis governs how active the music feels.

This becomes particularly useful when diagnosing a cue that feels overwritten or underwritten.

Maybe you watch a scene and think:

“There’s just too much happening.”

Or perhaps the opposite:

“The scene needs more momentum.”

Those are essentially observations about the amount of musical information.

Importantly, this doesn't necessarily mean the music needs to become louder. A cue can be extremely quiet while still containing a great deal of musical information, just as a very sparse cue can be loud.

The question is simply: how much is happening musically?

2. Scale

The second axis is related to the first, but it answers a different question:

How big or small is the musical information?

Imagine a melody played by a single violin.

Now imagine exactly the same melody played by a full 24-piece violin section.

The amount of musical information may be essentially identical—the melody hasn't changed—but the perceived scale is completely different.

This distinction is extremely important because amount of information and scale interact with each other.

Increasing the amount of musical information tends to add intensity. Increasing the scale can multiply it.

For example, a fast melody played by a solo violin might feel energetic. The same fast melody played by a large orchestra can feel enormous.

This is why a cue can sometimes feel out of proportion to a scene even when the amount of musical activity itself isn't necessarily excessive.

Imagine a very intimate conversation filmed largely in close-ups, with two characters having a sincere and emotionally vulnerable exchange. Suddenly, a huge orchestral cue enters.

The problem might not be that the music contains too many notes. The problem is that the scale is wrong for what we're seeing.

A single piano might preserve the intimacy of the scene. A full orchestra might completely overwhelm it.

So when a cue feels like “too much” or “too little,” it’s worth asking:

Is there too much musical information—or is the music simply operating at the wrong scale?

Those are two very different problems, and they require different solutions.

3. Narrative Intent

The third axis is perhaps the most fundamental:

Why is the music there in the first place?

Every cue should have a purpose.

That purpose might be to:

Create an emotion that wouldn't otherwise be present
Reinforce an actor's performance
Reveal something about a character
Help establish or accelerate pacing
Create contrast
Smooth a transition between scenes
Draw attention to something important
Communicate something that isn't explicitly shown on screen

There are countless possibilities.

The important thing is to be intentional about them.

If a composer receives the note “make this more emotional”, there is a lot of room for interpretation.

But if the actual intention is “I want the audience to understand that she's hiding how devastated she is”, you've given the composer something much more useful to work with.

The more precisely you understand what the music needs to accomplish, the easier it becomes to determine whether the cue is succeeding.

Problems on this axis usually reveal themselves quite clearly: the music simply isn't fulfilling the function it was supposed to fulfil.

4. Style

The fourth axis concerns the musical style or aesthetic of the score.

Music, much like cinematography, wardrobe, production design, and colour grading, contributes to the overall identity of a film.

There is enormous creative freedom here, but there are also expectations.

Audiences bring certain associations with them. A medieval fantasy film, for example, will naturally create expectations about what its music might sound like. Choosing a hip-hop-inspired score could completely subvert those expectations.

That doesn't necessarily make it a bad choice.

In fact, it could be precisely what makes the film interesting.

But it is a riskier creative decision, because the music is now working against some of the audience's established expectations. For that approach to feel coherent, other creative decisions may need to support it.

This is why style should never be considered in isolation.

A musical choice can be unconventional and still work brilliantly if it feels intentional and connected to the rest of the film.

The question isn't necessarily:

“Does this style belong in this genre?”

It can instead be:

“Does this style belong in this particular film?”

5. Internal Coherence

A music cue doesn't exist independently from the rest of the score.

It has to work not only within the scene where it appears, but also in relation to everything that comes before and after it.

This is what I mean by internal coherence.

And importantly, coherence doesn't mean that every cue needs to sound the same.

You can absolutely break established patterns, change musical language, or deliberately subvert expectations.

In fact, those moments can be extremely powerful.

But the change should feel intentional and achieve the effect you're looking for.

A useful example is a temporary score built from music taken from different sources. You might find several tracks that individually work reasonably well with their respective scenes. But when you put them together, something feels wrong.

The problem isn't necessarily any individual cue.

It's the relationship between them.

They may belong to completely different musical worlds, use incompatible emotional languages, or establish conflicting expectations about what the score is supposed to be.

This is why a cue that works beautifully on its own can sometimes feel completely wrong when placed back into the context of the entire film.

How to Use the Five Axes When Giving Notes

The real value of this framework isn't simply being able to analyse music.

It's being able to communicate about it more effectively.

Imagine you're watching a cue with your composer and you feel that something isn't working.

Instead of saying:

“It feels too much.”

Try breaking that feeling down.

Is there too much musical information?

Is the scale too large?

Is the music failing to fulfil its narrative intent?

Does the style feel wrong for the film?

Or does the cue work by itself but feel inconsistent with the rest of the score, creating an issue with internal coherence?

You don't need to use these terms explicitly when talking to your composer. The value lies in having a mental framework for identifying what the actual problem is.

And sometimes, more than one axis will be involved.

That's completely normal. Music is multidimensional, and the boundaries between these categories aren't always perfectly clean.

What matters is having a way of thinking about the problem.

The Most Important Axis Isn't “How Good Is the Music?”

There's one final point I think is particularly important.

Notice that I haven't included intrinsic musical quality as one of the five axes.

That's deliberate.

A piece of music can be beautiful, sophisticated, technically impressive, and incredibly enjoyable to listen to—and still be completely wrong for a film.

Conversely, a relatively simple piece of music can be the perfect choice for a particular scene.

When you're scoring a film, the question isn't:

“Is this good music?”

It's:

“Is this the right music for this film, in this scene, at this moment?”

Film music exists in relation to the picture. Its job is to serve the story.

In that sense, the best score isn't necessarily the one that would make the best standalone album. It's the one that makes the film work better.

That's an important distinction.

You should absolutely strive to have the best music possible—but never at the expense of the five axes that determine how effectively that music functions within the film.

Bringing It All Together

The five axes provide a practical way of thinking about the relationship between music and picture:

Amount of music information — How much is happening?

Scale — How big or small does it feel?

Narrative intent — What is the music supposed to accomplish?

Style — What musical language belongs to this film?

Internal coherence — How does this cue relate to the rest of the score?

You can use these five dimensions when developing the musical direction of your film, discussing ideas with your composer, or giving notes on individual cues.

And perhaps most importantly, they can help turn the frustratingly vague “something doesn't feel right” into a much more useful creative conversation.

The better you can identify what isn't working, the easier it becomes for your composer to understand how to fix it.

That's ultimately what good communication between a filmmaker and a composer is about: not necessarily speaking the same technical language, but finding a common language that allows both of you to work toward the same creative goal.

—

Álvaro Rodríguez Cabezas
Composer for Film, Television, and Video Games
The heart of a film beats in its music

Álvaro Rodríguez Cabezas is an award-winning film composer, arranger, and music producer with over 20 years of experience in composition and film scoring. Having crafted original music and cinematic scores for feature films, documentaries, and web series internationally, he helps indie filmmakers and directors understand how film music and soundtracks elevate storytelling through expert insights drawn from his professional career as a composer.