 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.