S.T.A.L.K.E.R | Shadow of Chernobyl - Dirge for the Planet [Cover By DAR]
43Just as I had promised to several folks earlier in the year, here's my take on Fire Lake's "Dirge for the Planet" from the STALKER series!
Many thanks to all the fans whom left kind words and support for my previous STALKER cover, "Live to Forget"! I also want to thank you all for your patience in waiting for this cover. It may take me a while to get to songs, but I always try my best to deliver on them when I'm finally able to record.
Man, this is such a hauntingly somber track. A beautifully melancholic track that wonderfully fits the wasteland that is "The Zone". I remember falling in love with this track as soon as I heard it on Sidorovich's radio in the basement/shop.
I tried my best to stay true to the original, while also trying to combine the acoustic and piano versions of the song. As much as I love the acoustic version from the soundtrack release, its a shame that the piano version that we heard in game never got a proper release. Also to my surprise, I don't think anyone has attempted to combine the two together. With that in mind, I knew exactly how I was going to tackle this cover.
At first, I was very doubtful that I'd be able to do vocals for the cover, and was prepared to just have this be an instrumental-only cover. Curiosity and stubbornness got the better of me and I wound up transposing the song down by 3 semi-tones (tuned to C# Standard). Thus resulting in a warmer tone, further reinforcing the melancholy of the track.
Despite the mournful theme of the song, doing the vocals on this was hilarious fun. I had me going falsetto, Mickey Mouse voice, which actually worked really well in the mix. It really made for this very choir-like sound in the song. Then, an octave below the "I want my MTV" voice, the warm, softly sung, main vocals. The fun goofing around aside, this was also a rather interesting experiment and experience with vocals. Its always fun dipping my toes into styles sounds that I haven't tried before. Or at the very least, styles that I don't often get to explore.
As for the instrumental, the one regret that I have was that I wasn't able to do the 2nd guitar part from the acoustic version. It had a left and right acoustic part, but in order to make space for the piano, I had to cut the harmony guitar part. That in combination with how I had the guitar set up in the mix didn't really allow for extra guitars without sounding weird.
Recording and working with my acoustic (or well, any acoustic element/instrument for that matter), is always really tricky. However, I feel like this time around, I managed to get my mic and chair all set up in the right position. Along with the right amount of compression, EQ, reverb, and other things, I think it turned out very nice!
I actually had some ideas for some noodling around with some lead guitar parts, but I decided to exercise some restraint. Along with what I previously said about having extra guitars, I felt like anything extra thrown in would've altered the overall mood and vibe of the song.
Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed my rendition of this beautiful track! This will eventually make its way on to streaming services, it just depends on how long it takes my distributor to set things up. I'll make another post for when it goes live on other platforms. ~DAR
Originally Composed By Fire Lake
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