Quince Dillons High D: Mandolin Tab

Mandolin tab and sheet music with synced audio · Key of D · 120 BPM · 4/4 time · Old-timey · Beginner

Chords used in this arrangement: D, A, C.

Quince Dillon was a Civil War fifer, not a fiddler, who served in the Virginia Militia, and the tune is named after him because that soaring high D note in the A-part is essentially a fife note, the kind of pitch that cuts right through battlefield noise.

Henry Reed, the legendary southwestern Virginia fiddler who passed the tune along, didn't even remember what it was called, so folks just named it after the guy he got it from and the note you can't avoid. Interestingly, Reed normally played it with four parts, but when folklorist Alan Jabbour recorded him for the Library of Congress in 1967, he only played two, so the two-part version most people know is basically a truncated field recording. On mandolin you've got a real advantage here: fiddlers half-jokingly call it "Quince Dillon's High C#" because hitting that note cleanly on a fretless instrument is genuinely stressful, but you've got frets, so enjoy that moment while the fiddle players sweat it out.

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. Download the Quince Dillons High D PDF.

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