The Well-Tuned Piano recording made in 1962 cuts off suddenly after only an hour and a half. Young has also been influential to many composers and musicians throughout his life. Dennis Johnson cites Young as an influence in his composition, "The Second Machine", which is based on four single pitches of Young's "Four Dreams of China". Composer and critic Kyle Gann has said that "The Well-Tuned Piano", "may well be the most important American piano work since Charles Ives's "Concord Sonata", in size, in influence, and in revolutionary innovation." Gann has also called the piece "the most important piano work of the late
Tenor guitar was in continuous production until 1972. In the mid 1950s electric solid-body tenor guitar models began to appear from companies such as Gibson, Gretsch, Guild, and Epiphone. These were mostly produced as one-off custom instruments but, for a short time in 1955, Gretsch manufactured the only production electric solid-bodied tenor guitar, the Gretsch 6127 DuoJet. Tenor guitars are normally tuned in fifths (usually C3 G3 D4 A4, similar to the tenor banjo, mandola, or the viola) although other tunings are also common, such as "guitar tuning", "Chicago tuning," or baritone ukulele tuning (D3 G3 B3 E4), "Irish" or "octave mandolin"