CM produces sound by transforming a metalevel representation of music into a variety of different protocols for controlling sound production and display.
In general, one does not "synthesize" audio signals with CM. Rather, CM is used to control other sound producing software or hardware.
CM can produce MIDI output or files formatted for a variety of sound synthesis programs.
CM provides a set of utilities or functions for music composition, with support for a few different programming languages (Scheme, a dialect of Lisp and SAL).
CM expressions are evaluated by an interpreter (or "listener") to produce desired output data or files.
Users of CM typically write script files that are incrementally evaluated in the interpreter.
CM scripts are now created, edited, and executed from within the Graphical Realtime Algorithmic Composition Environment (Grace) application.
