Very nice old time folk feel to this and a very nice melody that you put across well. One of my favorites of yours, I think. I don't really have any suggestions - it's a really good song as it is.

@gavin

Thanks Gavin. Yes this was meant to be very old time sounding. Maybe because I had listened to some Kate Rusby songs.

Hi Polly. Happy New Year to you.

Finding this song was a delightful surprise for me tonight. Beautiful. Really lovely. I have one suggestion. The lines "keeps me wishing for those things, those things that never can be" seem to contradict faith (to my understanding anyway). At the start you "wish...to live in a place where nothing ever dies" but at the end you say that it can never be. Christian faith says that it can be (Revelations 21).

Really beautifully done. I love the twist. I always hope to be surprised by the story's twist in a song and I rarely am. At the line "...under the wildflowers" I was like "oh....oh...he died. Oh" ?

Brilliant

@jenny-stokes

Thank you Jenny! I understand what you mean about the contradiction, and I noticed that too. I think the song is trying to express that conflict between having faith and yet feeling helpless at times. Even if we feel sure there is some kind of afterlife, we still sometimes are sad that our loved ones are there and we are still here, without them.

Great lyric Polly! A nice "Appalachian" style ballad 🙂

There's a rhythm you fall into just before you start singing your verses that I really like... then it gets lost. Have you ever tried playing with a metronome? 

@japov

I practiced with a metronome every day for years, when I was playing bluegrass banjo. I figured I don't need it anymore. But I will check that out and try to see what I did wrong.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvhYtsmGPbdOlDM67W7HuyDwRQdh

@japov

Thanks japov, I like the way you did that. I will think about what maybe I am doing differently. The picking is supposed to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. But maybe I strayed away from that somehow? I will check. No, no one else has criticized it, or any of my songs, for that. But maybe they didn't pay enough attention. I definitely want to stay in strict 4/4 throughout the song.

@japov

I tried playing along with my recording, and I couldn't! Very surprised, because it used to drive me nuts when other people did that at jam sessions. I think maybe I wasn't counting during the spaces after each line,  not letting enough beats go by. 

Well thank you for being so observant and bothering to let me know. This is very important to me, because I really hate bad timing!

I'll work on trying to fix that today and hopefully can post a corrected recording. And yes, I might have done the same thing with a lot of other songs. Ugh.

Actually, you've got a great ear and ability to embellish melodically. I would suggest focusing on simplifying your initial rhythm tracks, then adding a lead guitar 🙂 

@japov

I've been trying to figure it out today, but so far couldn't. The picking has 8 notes per measure, so it should all fit. But when I try to strum along with it, there isn't enough space sometimes. I have tried this on several different songs, and even a simple one was hard to strum with in places. Argh.

Can you play along and embellish upon what I recorded? 😉

@japov

I made recordings of myself with just singing and simple strumming, and then it's more correct. I'm trying to figure out what exactly I do wrong when picking those 8 note measures. I might be shortening some into half measures. Not sure yet.

Well, my Mom made me play along with a metronome when I was 8y/o... then in high school I started playing drums. I guess the "click" of that metronome is just embedded in my brain now lol. 

Drum machines are fun to play along with!

Have you ever heard of "ChordPulse"?