Free Guitar Tabs
Devil's Dream
Free guitar tabs plus standard notation for fiddle!
And now with a TWO-PAGE version for easier reading.
This piece is just plain FUN
Fiddlers love mastering the famous "circle" pattern which crops up with the first Bm chord and starts again with the next A chord, and guitarists have a similar thing going on with their string crossings.
Here's "Vi 'The Fiddler' Wickam" on YouTube demonstrating the liveliness of this tune, starting at 16 seconds in:
This is different from the version I heard...
Like EVERY performance of this piece that you will ever encounter, this arrangement differs a bit from mine, and from everybody else's! Look farther down the page for a guitar video, and you'll see what I mean.
Here is what the new two-page arrangement looks like - very spread out and easy to read:
Don't neglect careful fingering
For guitar players, this piece is a good opportunity to get left hand finger 4 into the mix!
So many kids try to avoid using that finger at all costs, but they are doing themselves a disservice if they don't strengthen that finger and teach it to be coordinated.
A more condensed sheet
Here is the same arrangement, but on just one page. Harder to see the individual tabs, but maybe easier for the backup chords part:
Flat-picking the right way for speed
A lot of beginner guitar players don't "get" the down-up-down-up stroking of flat-picking 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.
Not just fun - but excellent technique practice
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 long down, then an up.
And another challenging bit
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.
In the first arrangement, 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.
A circular pattern that is fun to master
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.
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!
The guitar tabs links:
Download free guitar sheet music Devil's Dream
Download the two-page version of free guitar tabs & fiddle music Devil's Dream
Dianna:
Your website is a light in the darkness. THANK YOU for all you do in helping to spread the love of music. It matters!
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Interested in songs from the Bible for your students or church? Check out my other website, SingTheBibleStory.com!
All the first-year material I give my beginner students.
Piano keyboard sheets, scales, chords, note-reading exercises, and over 256 pages of music!
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This beautiful song book for piano & voice "Esther, For Such a Time as This", available as a digital download, tells the riveting story of the time when Jews in ancient Persia faced a foe named Haman, and how a brave young queen risked her life to save her people.
A good choice for a singing story-teller, an operatic group, a short theater production, or a class of children!
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Lots of trolls in this book - including one who gives him a Christmas gift!
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Comments: Do you have a story or a question about music teaching? Share it!
Please note that all comments are moderated, and will not appear until I have approved them. Also, IF YOU ARE ASKING FOR MUSIC THAT IS NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, YOUR REQUEST WILL BE IGNORED. That's pretty much any music written in the last 75 years...
About the Author
Hi, I'm Dana! (Say that like "Anna".) I'm the owner of Music-for-Music-Teachers.com, and a newer site, SingTheBibleStory.com.
Like so many of you, I've been playing the piano since early childhood, and have added a few other instruments along the way, plus an interest in arranging and composing music.
You can find out more about me and the reason for this website at my About Me page.
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