Catalog of Shōdan: Recitative Chants
Notto-chant
Arhythmic poetic text sung in sashinori style, it usually depicts scenes of prayer. Instrumental music also called Notto, precedes it, so we refer to it as Notto-music to avoid confusion. The Notto-chant is sung in tsuyogin style, over a steady beat provided by the kotsuzumi.
Although the vocal part is non-congruent, it is not entirely detached from the strict percussion accompaniment. The waki uses the ōtsuzumi’s chon stroke on the third beat to position his declamation, so musicians often perform a rallentando controlled by the ōtsuzumi shortly before the third beat.
For the most part, a complete sentence fits in the eight beats that separate two consecutive chon strokes. Longer sentences are spread over three or four consecutive honji. In this case, there is no rallentendo on the intermediate third beats, and instead the ōtsuzumi fills the intermediate honji with a sequence of five or six chon strokes.