After Tom began taking piano lessons at the age of eight, he came to realise that understanding cadences was a fast route to developing his own musical ideas, which made the music he learnt a basis for striking out on his own musical path.

Later, once he had developed his great passion for film, he came to admire filmmakers, who through long and close co-operation with composers were able to develop a mutual and credible language on a musical level. He reserved the same admiration for those filmmakers who composed the music themselves.

His own soundtrack career began more by default, and out of financial necessity than anything else. He had no budget for a composer, so turned his own hand to the task. These first composing experiences led him to the "great discovery that the composition process actually begins with the scriptwriting, and that with the search for the language of the film, it finds its tone melody and harmony." Meanwhile, Tom Tykwer has put his music to all his films.

Originally motivated by putting together a soundtrack, the music now composed by Pale 3 (Tykwer/Klimek/Heil) is not only film music. And in co-operation with Xaver Naudascher, the creative process of scoring music outside the realm of cinema is sometimes a kind of liberation. "It is like with writing or painting: with a semi-elaborate computer, music you think up can be transformed immediately. The music exists, regardless as to whether or not you have any financial backing."