Dream On – Aerosmith

Dream On by Aerosmith is another great example of the drum part perfectly supporting the song.

Starting with a guitar intro, the drums come in with the vocals for verse 1 using just the bell of the ride cymbal. At then end of the verse, two bars of floor tom and snare drum lead into the Pre-Chorus. The first Pre-Chorus is about playing simple time, then three and a bit bars rest and back into verse 2.

Verse 2 is similar to Verse 1 using the Ride cymbal bell, but ends with a fill to go into the second Pre-Chorus. This Pre-chorus has Crashes on beats 1 & 3, and finishes with a two bar build on the Snare and Floor Tom.

The Interlude is all about the Guitar and so the Drums sit out, coming back in with a crash (literally!) for the Pre-Chorus. Finally, we get to the Chorus. In bars 62, 66 & 67, we see the crash cymbal marked with a Staccato dot. In this case, it means that you will need to choke each cymbal hit as marked. The fill at bar 63 mirrors the guitar part at that point, whilst the fill at 67 mirrors the bass part. The only part to watch out for is the change in the final Pre-Chorus of the crashes being on beats 2 & 4 (part from bar 74 where the crashes are on 1 & 4!) rather than the 1 & 3 they are on in the other Pre-Choruses.

The song itself was remarkable from Aerosmith, as it is the only song on the first album to feature Steven Tyler singing in his more normal register. This has led to many people not being able to identify this as an Aerosmith track, even today.

The drums were played, as normal for Aerosmith, by founding member Joey Kramer.

Aerosmith – Dream On.pdf