But it's not just a beat occurring in the middle of each bar, it's the pervading accentuation. To get a plausible gavotte out of Greensleeves, you'd have to drop the initial single-note anacrusis (as done in 'Greensleeves to a Ground') and shift all the barlines, like so:pancelticpiper wrote:My point was only that if the idea was to play the tune in duple rhythm with a beat occurring in the middle of each bar it doesn't require extensive reworking of the tune, but can be done at the drop of a hat.
And that's not bad at all, but arguably more than the drop of a hat!
Edit (two and a half hours later): and still not sure it's 'right' because the implied harmony's now working against the bars. So I might want to harmonise that with 'irregular' (for Greensleeves) chords on every half bar to justify/bring out the 'new' rhythm, e.g. NC | C / G / | Em / Am / | Dm / G / | C / etc. And you know what's going to happen now? I'm probably going to go and write the bl**dy gavotte!