If I write something on a piece of paper (i.e. sheet music), I can't actually 'hear' it. I can conjure up visions of what the symbols on the page mean, and imagine a piece of music as it might sound in performance, but that sensation is nontransferable; it can't be shared or transmitted. It doesn't become a 'musical experience' in normal terms until 'the recipe' has been converted into wiggling air molecules.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance space is sculpted into something. This 'molecule-sculpture-over-time' is then 'looked at' by the ears of the listeners -- or a microphone. SOUND is 'ear-decoded data.' Things which MAKE SOUND are things which are capable of creating perturbations. These perturbations modify (or sculpt) the raw material (the 'static air' in the room -- the way it was 'at rest' before the musicians started fucking around with it). If you purposefully generate atmospheric perturbations ('air shapes'), you are composing.