La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works are cited as prominent examples of post-war experimental and contemporary music, and were tied to New York's downtown music and Fluxus art scenes. Initially inspired by sources such as Indian classical music, serialism, and jazz, Young is perhaps best known for his pioneering work in Western drone music (originally referred to as "dream music"), prominently explored in the 1960s with the experimental music collective the Theatre of Eternal Music. He has engaged in musical and multimedia collaborations with a wide range of artists, including Tony Conrad, Pandit Pran Nath, John Cale, Terry Riley, and visual artist Marian Zazeela, with whom he developed the Dream House sound and light installation.
Influences
Young's first musical influence came in early childhood in Bern. He relates that "the very first sound that I recall hearing was the sound of wind blowing under the eaves and around the log extensions at the corners of the log cabin". Continuous sounds--human-made as well as natural--fascinated him as a child. He described himself as fascinated from a young age by droning sounds, such as "the sound of the wind blowing", the "60 cycle per second drone [of] step-down transformers on telephone poles", the tanpura drone and the alap of Indian classical music, "certain static aspects of serialism, as in the Webern slow movement of the Symphony Opus 21", and Japanese gagaku "which has sustained tones in it in the instruments such as the Sho". The four pitches he later named the "Dream chord", on which he based many of his mature works, came from his early age appreciation of the continuous sound made by the telephone poles in Bern.  Jazz is one of his main influences and until 1956 he planned to devote his career to it. At first, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh influenced his alto saxophone playing style, and later John Coltrane shaped Young's use of the sopranino saxophone. Jazz was, together with Indian music, an important influence on the use of improvisation in his works after 1962. La Monte Young discovered Indian music in 1957 on the campus of UCLA. He cites Ali Akbar Khan (sarod) and Chatur Lal (tabla) as particularly significant. The discovery of the tambura, which he learned to play with Pandit Pran Nath, was a decisive influence in his interest in long sustained sounds. Young also acknowledges the influence of Japanese music, especially Gagaku, and Pygmy music.  La Monte Young discovered classical music rather late, thanks to his teachers at university. He cites Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, Perotin, Leonin, Claude Debussy and Organum musical style as important influences, but what made the biggest impact on his compositions was the serialism of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern.  Young was also keen to pursue his musical endeavors with the help of psychedelics. Cannabis, LSD and peyote played an important part in Young's life from mid-1950s onwards, when he was introduced to them by Terry Jennings and Billy Higgins. He said that "everybody [he] knew and worked with was very much into drugs as a creative tool as well as a consciousness-expanding tool". This was the case with the musicians of the Theatre of Eternal Music, with whom he "got high for every concert: the whole group". He considers that the cannabis experience helped him open up to where he went with Trio for Strings, though sometimes it proved a disadvantage when performing anything which required keeping track of the number of elapsed bars. He commented on the subject:  These tools can be used to your advantage if you're a master of [them]... If used wisely - the correct tool for the correct job - they can play an important role... It allows you to go within yourself and focus on certain frequency relationships and memory relationships in a very, very interesting way.

Q: Did he have any influences?
A: Jazz is one of his main influences

Q: What other influences did he have?
A: La Monte Young discovered Indian music in 1957 on the campus of UCLA.

Q: How did he discover Indian music?
A: on the campus of UCLA.

Q: Did he have other influences?
A: Young also acknowledges the influence of Japanese music,

Q: Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
A: also keen to pursue his musical endeavors with the help of psychedelics.
How did pschedelics help?
It allows you to go within yourself and focus on certain frequency relationships and memory relationships in a very, very interesting way.
It allows you to go within yourself and focus on certain frequency relationships and memory relationships in a very, very interesting way.