Devil's Dream — Mandolin Tab

Mandolin tab and sheet music with synced audio · Key of D · 120 BPM · 4/4 time · Bluegrass · Intermediate

Chords used in this arrangement: A, Bm, E.

Most players think of "Devil's Dream" as an American tune through and through, but it almost certainly began life in Scotland around 1790 as "The De'il Among the Tailors," a reel rooted in the folk legend that the Devil, who is supposedly good at every craft, could never learn tailoring because tradesmen would shut up shop the moment he walked in. The name changed somewhere in its Atlantic crossing, and by the mid-19th century American fiddlers had fully claimed it: the earliest known appearance under the "Devil's Dream" title is in the manuscript book of a Philadelphia-area musician, M.E. Eames, dated 1859, and he filed it firmly in the hornpipe section, not the reel section, suggesting the tune's rhythmic identity was already shifting in the New World. It was a prestige piece: New England dance callers Tolman and Page wrote that mastering "Devil's Dream" was a prerequisite for being taken seriously as a fiddler, and the tune even turned up in Bernard Herrmann's Academy Award–winning score for the 1941 film The Devil and Daniel Webster. Bill Monroe recorded it with the Bluegrass Boys, cementing its place in the bluegrass canon.

Structurally the tune follows the standard AABB form, with each part repeated. The A part is a rolling, scalar workout, a nearly unbroken stream of eighth notes that descends and climbs through the upper octave, giving it that relentless forward momentum old-timers described as feeling "interminable" in the best possible sense. The B part shifts to a lower, more arpeggiated pattern that relieves the tension before the A comes thundering back. Most bluegrass versions sit in A major, and the tune stays resolutely diatonic. There's no modal ambiguity here, just clean, bright forward drive at every measure.

Mandolin tips:

- Lock in your alternate picking before you add speed. The A part is essentially a wall of scalar eighth notes; if your pick direction isn't consistent from the start, the phrase will fold under pressure. Set a metronome well below 120 BPM and drill down-up-down-up until the motion is automatic. - Use a slight accent on the downbeats to punch the meter. At a bluegrass tempo, the tune can blur into an undifferentiated flurry. A subtle emphasis on beat 1 of each bar keeps the dance feel alive and makes the phrase shape audible to listeners. - Watch your string-crossing economy on the B part. The B section moves between adjacent string pairs in an arpeggiated pattern; keep your pick strokes small and close to the strings rather than sweeping wide. Clean, controlled crossings here are what separates it sounding machine-like versus a version that actually swings.

This page includes mandolin tablature, standard music notation, and a chord chart — printable as PDF and playable in sync with the original recording. Change the key, slow the tempo down, and loop the bars you want to practise.