Free guitar tabs that include standard treble clef notation and chord symbols will make this piece very usable for your students, particularly for group sessions. This is a great song for guitarists and fiddlers to get together on! Check out the video below:
A lot of beginner guitar players don't "get" the down-up-down-up stroking of flatpicking unless they are shown. They may hear a song, acquire the guitar tabs, and start to play it, but with every pick stroke going down instead of down then up. This is too slow, of course. So Devil's Dream, with almost the entire melody made up of eighth notes, is perfect for polishing that down-up-down-up technique. (Quarter notes = down; 2 eighth notes in a row are down-up. A dotted quarter followed by an eighth will be a down, then an up.)
A very fun but tricky part comes in measures 4, 13, and 14, with the Bm chords. Some arrangements have the player lift the finger off string 2 in order to play the note "b" as an open string. I have fingered it on string 3 instead, fret 4, so that the player can just press a Bm chord (or portion thereof) and leave the hand there. The pick travels back and forth over the 3 strings in a bouncing fashion that is a lot of fun! Same thing with the A chord in the measures just before the Bm; finger a partial A chord and bounce back and forth across the strings.
Here is the very same arrangement as Devil's Dream above, but spread over two pages to make it easier to read.
Here's another video I like of Devil's Dream, played by a solo guitarist.
Once beginner guitar players have heard Devil's Dream, they just have to have it. There are lots of little variations on the basic melody, so I won't pretend this version is the final word!
Peter: Thanks for a great web site and a very useful tool for us teaching guitar.
Christine: Thank you so much for this site! I have just started teaching some really keen Y6 boys who want to play Scarborough Fair, and your version is perfect. I will now go and look at what other goodies you have!
Matt: THIS SITE IS AMAZING!!I've been teaching guitar for about 5 years now, and I've only just found your website! (I could really have used it 5 years ago) :-)I teach at primary schools every week day for about 4 hours, so the beginner tabs you have are ideal. Thank you so much for your hard work getting these on the web, you have made many children very happy!!
Lori, homeschool mom, songwriter/musician and private music teacher: Just wanted to say "thank you" for this site and for allof your dedication and hard work! I have literally combed the internet for months on end to find free and "doable" resources for my young students and for my own children, whom I have homeschooled for nine years. I will be returning to this site over and over again from here on out and am excited to presentsome of the tools I found today on here to my voice and piano students later this week! My thirteen-year old son is happily, as I type, working with the guitar chord sheets I just printed for him! Wish I'd found you earlier! Thanks a million, and God bless--
Dylan: Just wanted to express my overwhelming joy in findingyour web site! :D Lots of good info!! My wife and I own our own teaching studio in Texas and I am always looking for new songs to teach my beginner guitar students. You've done a wonderful job of providing great tunes with ACCURATE sheet music/TAB! Your web site is wonderful! Thank you so much!! Many blessings...
Bob: I am a "retiree" and brand new guitar student. I have used your guitar tabs for Shenandoah and Amazing Grace, and find it exciting to hear real music coming out of my guitar for the first time.
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Becky: A thousand thanks for your beginning piano and guitar songs. I've already printed several for my children, including the Pretty Little Horses TAB and Carol of the Bells for piano. What a wonderful resource!
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Lin: Thank you for a most excellent site. I am a classical guitar teacher, who endeavors to cover chords and fingerstyle as well.I especially liked the printable Celtic music, as some of my teenage students enjoy it!Thank you, again.
Sylvain: Stumbled across your website by accident-slash-chance and it instantly became helpful... I sort of have to prove myself as a primary music teacher. Hasn't been easy, but I love the work. I found great ideas for my guitar unit on your site, as I didn't know where to begin. Thanks to you I will survive my next 6 weeks. I also teach choir to middle school, and I love your little morning warmups. Looking forward to more of that in the future. Keep up the great work, it is very inspirational for us beginner teachers.
Joy: I am a missionary wife living in Spain... I also am teaching guitar to 2 adults, and have run across the same problem. The Spanish material is all very complicated very quickly so many of my students would become discouraged. So, just writing to say thank you for all the work you´ve put into this and I´ll be using some of your pieces and certainly the advice to keep improving my teaching skills.