Drone music,[2][3] drone-based music,[4] or simply drone, is a minimalist[5] genre

that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds,[6] notes, or tone clusters – called
drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively
slight harmonic variations throughout each piece. La Monte Young, one of its 1960s
originators, defined it in 2000 as "the sustained tone branch of minimalism".[7]

Music which contains drones and is rhythmically still or very slow, called "drone
music",[2] can be found in many parts of the world, including bagpipe traditions,
among them Scottish pibroch piping; didgeridoo music in Australia, South Indian
classical Carnatic music and Hindustani classical music (both of which are
accompanied almost invariably by the Tanpura, a plucked, four-string instrument
which is only capable of playing a drone); the sustained tones found in the
Japanese gagaku[8] classical tradition; possibly (disputed) in pre-polyphonic
organum vocal music of late medieval Europe;[9] and the Byzantine chant's ison (or
drone-singing, attested after the fifteenth century).[10] Repetition of tones,
supposed to be in imitation of bagpipes,[11][12][13][14] is found in a wide variety
of genres and musical forms.