Tone is used to describe how the actual sounds of piece of music enhance the depth and meaning behind the music. Is the artist using a particular style or instrument to elicit something from the listener? Does the tempo lend itself well to the pacing of the narrative? Questions like these are best answered with tone.

Theme is used to discuss important themes and recurring motifs within a piece of music. If the whole album is a scathing critique of the military-industrial complex, then it will be pretty thematically high.

Narrative is usually used to discuss the storytelling capacity of individual songs as well as overall albums

Lyricism is the most obvious of the four catergories within the depth quadrant. Are the lyrics good? Wow, pretty good lyricism them. Truthfully though, there's more nuance. Generally this category is also influenced by how important the lyrics are towards the experience of the album, and whether the lyrics are memorable, engaging, and meaningful

This applies to all of the emotion categories, but in order to avoid having a million different spokes in the emotion quadrant, we decided to break all emotion down into three basic components and can try to describe more complex feeings through a combination of multiple categories. Guilt may be described as a combination of angry and sad, bitter sweet obviously happy and sad, stuff like that. Happy is used as the primary metric to discuss upbeat, feelgood moments within the music.

This applies to all of the emotion categories, but in order to avoid having a million different spokes in the emotion quadrant, we decided to break all emotion down into three basic components and can try to describe more complex feeings through a combination of multiple categories. Guilt may be described as a combination of angry and sad, bitter sweet obviously happy and sad, stuff like that. Angry is used as the primary metric to discuss ravenous, fearful, and outwardly aggressive moments within the music.

This applies to all of the emotion categories, but in order to avoid having a million different spokes in the emotion quadrant, we decided to break all emotion down into three basic components and can try to describe more complex feeings through a combination of multiple categories. Guilt may be described as a combination of angry and sad, bitter sweet obviously happy and sad, stuff like that. Sad is used as the primary metric to discuss low, heavy, and difficult emotional moments within the music.

Passion is used to discuss the impact that the emotions within the music have on the energy. In application though, it's much easier to think of this categories as answerings both the questions "Does it feel like the artist really cares about what is being brought up in the song/the album as a whole?" and "How intensly does the artist protray emotion in the music?"

Je Ne Sais Quoi is used as a catch all for all the other qualities that leave a lasting impact on the listener and leave a piece often feeling memorable.

Tempo is used to discuss the actual and preceived speed of an album. Is the album slow and somber, or more lively and fast?

A more technical category (as you may notice to be the case with the majority of the categories in the sound quadrant), brightness is used to discuss the overall timbre of the music. High brightness albums may have qualifiers like metalic, sharp, or clear, while something with low brightness may istead be though of as dark, murky, or velvetty sounds.

EAM stands for Electronically Augmented Music and is used to describe the degree to which the music has been augmented with post processing, petals, or just electronic instruments like synths. Unlike other categories, this one is divided into three areas with the use of boxes. The lowest box usually describes primarily or all accoustic sounds and acapella. The middle box is where altered accoustic instruments live, like electric guitars or effect pedals. FInally, the topmost box is reserved to synth forward and electronic music.

Layering serves a dual function in discussions. Firstly it serves as a quantified measure of the amount of unique layers in a composition as well as the complexity of each. but crucially it is often used to describe the effectiveness of an artists layering approach. Some tones and emotions are strengthened by a sparser arangement and that effect is catptured on this spoke.

Grit is used to describe the texture and tactile quality of the music. Is is buttery smooth or a little cruncky? How harsh is the sound? Generally more abrasive genres like rock, punk, and metal, will end up higher on spoke just by the nature of the sound.