Young was natural to the Mormon family in Bern, Idaho. His personal moved many days around his childhood spell his father searched for act prior to settling within Los Angeles, California. He exposed at Los Angeles City College, and was such a good saxophonist that he came out ahead of Eric Dolphy in an audition for the school's jazz band. Too when Dolphy, he besides played alongside Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Billy Higgins.

He late entered a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to study music, & late however a University of California, Berkeley. He as well exposed electronic music with Richard Maxfield and attended the summertime courses at Darmstadt under Karlheinz Stockhausen. All over this cycle he virtually gave higher swimming a sax to concentrate in composition, existence influenced by Anton Webern, Gregorian chant and various music of other cultures, including Indian classical music and Indonesian gamelan music. These interests, & a wish to become a cappella to buy the intervals he utilized by ear, late led to him researching by having Pandit Pran Nath from 1970 (fellow students included his married woman Marian Zazeela and the composer Terry Riley).

Young's early works primarily utilize a twelve tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg (with whom Young exposed at Los Angeles), although many one early pieces were destroyed per composer. After he visited Darmstadt, he found John Cage through Stockhausen, and became supplementary concerned within theatrical elements of music. He as well began to incorporate drones into his work further under a influence of non-american musics.

Fallowing becoming exposed in the Fluxus movement, in 1960, Young wrote one of his better known collections, Compositions 1960. It include pieces which emphasise a theatrical element of music. It consist of elementary videos to a performing artist like than the common musical notation. Of these instructs "draw a straight line and follow it", an additional instructs the performing artist to build a fire, & an additional says the performing artist should release a butterfly into the room.

More examples of Young's less conventional works include 'Composition 1960 #7', written for even any instruments capable of producing the constant healthy for indeterminite length (performances typically utilize organs or electronically generated sounds). A piece scores a bare fifth of a B-Natural & F-Sharp in Middle-C, and adds the instruction, 'To exist as held for an extended period'. A foremost performance lasted in the area of quaternary hours. Others include a soft piece where a performing artist is instructed to click a piano towards a close wall, & whenever a piano goes through the wall so keep pushing, otherwise to prevent when the performing artist is as well trite to prove my point; & a piece instructing the performing artist to urinate.

Young has written further conventional music too. One of his better known early pieces, a Trio for strings (understand: String Trio) of 1958, while considered super extreme at a instance of its composition, potty currently become seen when one of Young's supplementary conventional works. These are the serial work, but like than using the system to produce heavy, complicated music, Young's trio is slow moving, principally super quietly, & good of drones.

Inside 1962 Young wrote his 1st drone depending piece within just intonation, The 2nd Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, too his number one piece to utilise electronics. A piece, one of A 4 Dreams of China, is according to quartet pitches using a frequency ratios: 36-35-32-24 (G, C, +C#, D), & restricts when to which can be combined by owning any more. Virtually all of his pieces when this point come according to the drone of take pitches, played day & night, and the class actiin of yearn held pitches to become improvised on. For The 4 Dreams of China Young began to project a "Dream House," the weak & healthy installation in which musicians would survive & produce music twenty 4 hours a day, & formed The Theater of Eternal Music to realize this & more pieces. A class action initial involved his married woman, Marian Zazeela world health organization has provided a lightly indicate, A Ornamental Lightyears Tracery, for completely performance since 1965, Angus MacLise, and Billy Title. Within 1964 a ensemble contained Young & Zazeela, voices; Tony Conrad and John Cale, strings; and periodically Terry Riley, voice. Since 1966 Young has realized a "Dream Theater" despite interruptions due to the deficiency of funding for such an exceptional, extensive, & expensive design.

Virtually all one pieces develop hanker titles, like A Tortoise Recalling a Drone of a Sanctum Totals when it were Revealed in a Dreams of a Whirlwind & the Obsidian Gong, Illuminated per Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot & the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. Also, his works come typically of extreme length, numbers of pieces getting there is there are no beginning & no prevent, existing prior to & fallowing the particular performance. Young & Zazeela come besides in a long sleep schedule, their "days" existence yearn than twenty-4 hours.

A Easily Tuned Piano, the composition for solo piano around simply intonation is, along using his performances of the act, which keep around stretched to extra than sextuplet hours, considered his masterpiece. An lesson of strictly integrated improvisation, these are strongly influenced by mathematical composition & Hindustani classical music practice. These are one of a definining works of Western musical reductivism.

La Monte Young has been highly influential, from either John Cale's contribution to The Velvet Underground's sound to his have followers, including: Tony Conrad, Jon Hassell, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison, Henry Flynt, and Catherine Christer Hennix.