Otonality and utonality

Okay, so imagine you have a bunch of toys that make different sounds when you hit them. Some of the toys make higher sounds, and some toys make lower sounds. When we put all these toys together and hit them in a certain order, it makes music!

Otonality and utonality are two ways we can organize the toys to make music. Otonality means we start with the lowest sounding toy and move up to the highest sounding toy. It's like climbing up a ladder – the higher we go, the higher the sounds we hear.

Utonality is the opposite. We start with the highest sounding toy and move down to the lowest sounding toy. It's like sliding down a slide – as we go down, the sounds get lower and lower.

We can use either otonality or utonality to make different types of music. Sometimes, we use both together to create a special kind of music called "modal music."

So, otonality is like climbing up a ladder and utonality is like sliding down a slide. When we use these ways to organize our toys and make music, we call it modal music.