A composer, performer, and designer of musical instruments that use unorthodox tuning systems, Young has been involved since the late '70s in composition and sound sculpture related to the design of innovative musical instruments and approaches to listening.   Exemplary of these tendencies, she designed and built the Amaranth (1980), a 24-stringed instrument with a moveable bridge system that allows it to be tuned to any set of pitches.  Prior to this, she designed the prototype of Columbine, a percussion instrument using an expanded just tuning.  Young produced and released an LP entitled According, featuring three compositions written for sculptural installations by Reinhard Reitzenstein from 1978 to 1980. She is also the author of The Sackbut Blues (1989), a biography of Hugh Le Caine, and the editor of Musicworks Magazine, journal of Sound Exploration.