The Fourier transform performs a decomposition of a function of into its sinusoidal components. As typically phrased in the language of signal processing, the transformation decomposes a signal – some given function of time – into the frequencies that make up the signal, akin to how a musical chord can be expressed as combination of its constituent notes. While the Fourier transform is not limited to functions of time in the literal sense, it is conventional to call the domain of the original function the time domain and the domain of the transformed function the frequency domain.