Any mandola players here (especially folk mandolists)?
I've been working on a tune that's intended primarily for
guitar but I wanted to make a fiddle version as well, and I
realized that it fits more comfortably in the viola range than
the violin range (it's supposed to sound low; a viola can play it
an octave higher but a violin has to go a full two octaves up
from the pitches in my head). And hey, as long as I'm doing a
viola version I may as well do it for mandola as well,
right?[1] Only problem is, I'm not sure
what clef to use for mandola, and a casual search of the web
provides conflicting answers -- I can find web sources to support
all four of my guesses (with the last two appearing to be enough
less common that I might not have to worry about them):

- in treble clef, written an octave higher than it sounds,
just like guitar music[2], so the open
C string (sounding an octave below middle-C) is written as
middle-C
- in alto clef just like a viola (which
seems the most sensible but might not be folk-musician
friendly?), so the open C string is written below the first
ledger line under the staff,
- in treble clef written
at pitch (certainly straightforward but requires lots of ledger
lines), so the open C string is written below the fourth
ledger line under the staff, or
- in bass clef at
pitch, so the open C string is written in the second space, and
the open A string is written over the third ledger line above the
staff.
I already know what to do for viola (I
think[3]), but if any mandola
players (especially folkies) are reading this, please comment
below to let me know what clef(s) you prefer and/or
expect to see mandola parts written in. Treble or alto?
(Or "don't care as long as there's
tab[4] with it?) Thanks.
(I asked this elsewhere recently as well, and had intended to
ask here at the same time, but I've had few enough responses that
casting the question before a larger audience makes sense. I
haven't trued rec.music.makers.* yet -- is there a newsgroup
where mandolists would be likely to read, or is r.m.m.guitar
about as close a match as I'm likely to find?)
[1] I'm experimenting -- or rather tinkering -- with an
unfortunately-large pile of preprocessor directives stuffed into
an ABC file so that, without editing the file in between uses, I
can generate sheet music in appropriate clefs and suitable
octaves, with or without tabulature, for a bunch of different
instruments. (So adding correct mandola notation & tab is
actually more useful as part of tweaking and testing that, than
for handing to a mandolist in person, given how seldom I see
mandolas outside of music stores. The system is too complex to
be worth the trouble for most tunes, but figuring it out has been
an interesting exercise, and it's kind of nifty to be able to get
a PDF in the right clef, octave and tabulature for mandolin just
by putting "-MANDOLIN" on the command line, then getting the
right clef, octave, and tabulature for bass guitar by putting
"-BASS" there instead.
[2] But curiously, in all the examples I've seen so
far, without the little '8' below the clef which guitar music
uses to indicate the same thing -- apparently a convention at one
time was to put slashes across the treble clef to indicate the
number of octaves lower the music should sound, but I can't
recall ever seeing that either.
[3] In the past when I've been asked for viola-friendly
versions of music, the request has been for alto clef ... but in
my search for answers to the mandola question I learned that
there are some players who prefer to read in treble clef, or who
prefer to treat the viola as a transposing instrument and read
the notes which if played by violin fingerings on a viola would
produce the notes of the viola part. Are either of those common
enough for me to worry about, or should i be okay with just using
alto clef for viola music?
[4] Personally, I'm slower at reading tabulature than
reading standard notation, but I'm getting much better at
writing tab for folks who require it (or merely prefer
it), and my tab-reading skill is gradually improving as a side
effect! Funny thing though ... because the program I'm using,
abctab2ps, uses a system based on French lute tabulature for its
input regardless of which system you're going to ask it to print,
I'm currently a little better at that than I am at guitar tab
even though I've been seeing guitar tab everywhere for far longer
than I've been encountering French lute tab anywhere. (The
program will also print out German lute tab, but I don't read
that at all.)