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 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.