Oh, Brigid ... one last bit of help vis-a-vis tablature. I wasn't going to post this one lest it seem like gratuitous self-pluggery, which isn't done in a help thread.

However ... if you have a look at Aidan Crossey's original tunes via Pay The Reckoning you'll find around 100 tunes which are presented in mandolin tablature, conventional notation, abc and playable MIDI formats.

This might at the very least help demonstrate to you how conventional notation relates to mando tab. You could print off both versions and compare ... most of us have had to learn how to read and write mando tab pretty much from scratch. Mine looks a wee bit weird (as IanB alludes) because it's created as .txt file and can therefore be read/edited via any word processor or text editor rather than some high-falooting piece of specialist software.

A general purpose 4/4 tab template is available at the mandolincafe. I have modified this to create jig, slip jig, slide, waltz/mazurka and polka templates.

... Aidan Crossey