Learned a great practice technique for getting familiar with a tune recently (from Cape Breton great Jerry Holland):

Learn tunes by repeating two-bar segments. No pause in between, just cycle and cycle them. He was using this to teach us a tune by ear, but it would work just as well for getting really comfortable with the hard parts of a tune. Better to spend your time that way than playing a whole tune over and over when there's just one or two tricky bits you sometimes get wrong--as is usually the case.

Also, as a mandola player myself, I know it's a bit of a problematic instrument re: choice of keys. If you're playing with others in the conventional key for the tune, you have to get comfortable with going up the neck.

Since I am a lazy sod, I tend to sit around and play mandola by myself using the same fingerings as I would for mandolin...but the tunes come out in another key a fifth lower. Sounds fine in my basement. If forced into the previous-mentioned situation (sociability), I regret this...so, are you practicing the tunes in the same fingering and tempo as you have to perform them?   

W-O