ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an approach to analyzing many of Sonic Youth's divergent textures through a central dyad: a conflict between a bass note and prominent upper pitch that forms the harmonic basis for a section. The central dyad is made of the two most salient pitches in the texture, and/or it is the referential sonority that is the starting point or goal of chord progressions. The device recalls harmonic and voice-leading features of the music by composers from the first half of the 20th century. As with a tonal axis identified in the music of Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Aaron Copland, and others, the central dyad creates continuous internal tension between two tonal centres, even when one or the other is stronger within a given timespan. Many Sonic Youth tracks explore textures that are, in Lee Ranaldo's words, "fucked up".
