Cardiomyopathies are diseases of the heart that result in impaired cardiac muscle function. This dysfunction can progress to an inability to supply blood to the body. Cardiovascular diseases play a large role in overall global morbidity. Investigating the protein changes in the heart during disease can uncover pathophysiological mechanisms and potential therapeutic targets. Establishing a global protein expression "footprint" can facilitate more targeted studies of diseases of the heart.In the technical review presented here, we present methods to elucidate the heart's proteome through subfractionation of the cellular compartments to reduce sample complexity and improve detection of lower abundant proteins during multidimensional protein identification technology analysis. Analysis of the cytosolic, microsomal, and mitochondrial subproteomes separately in order to characterize the murine cardiac proteome is advantageous by simplifying complex cardiac protein mixtures. In combination with bioinformatic analysis and genome correlation, large-scale protein changes can be identified at the cellular compartment level in this animal model.