Wow, thanks everyone for such a warm welcome!

I think Uzi is probably right that elementary/middle school teachers have a reason for warning kids against trying to tune on their own... my teacher in primary/early high school (I think the equivalent of middle school) was always armed with stories of students who had tried to tune on their own, or who let their guitar-playing cousins tune their violins, and ended up with broken strings. Unfortunately,  because I didn't continue with my formal lessons for long enough to be taught how to tune the violin myself, (as Uzi pointed out) it led to me being forever scared of trying it for myself.

Thanks for the tip about the tuner augustoad. I've had some luck with  http://www.instrument-tuner.com/ In order to not become to reliant on it, I'm trying to guess whether each string is too high or too low before I actually look at the screen, but for the time being, at least it's getting me to have a go at tuning and play. When I opened up my case, all of the strings had come loose, the bridge had fallen, etc. so fixing all of this up carefully helped me to get over my fear a bit! ElisaDalViolin, good to hear I'm not the only one who was afraid of this! I completely agree with you about "babying" toys NoStringsAttached - as I've discovered, there's a big difference between respecting and looking after an instrument, and being afraid of it! It was piecing my violin back together that led me to look for videos online, which led to me finding this forum. I agree with your sentiment coolpinkone - Fiddlerman's resources and all of the great advice here has been absolutely invaluable.

Tyberius, your description of the Fiddlerman community is precisely how it appeared to me as an outsider, and why I decided to sign up. It looks like a very encouraging, motivating, fostering environment. I was very surprised to wake up this morning and find seven replies to my post - I've never had this sort of a welcome on a forum before (although I guess the time difference helps a bit - I'm in Australia ) I hope that in time I can contribute to this community, and help support other beginners like myself

Thanks Shell, Fiddlerman and kylesito!

I first learned violin because I was interested in it - I didn't have a good enough ear to be selected for music tuition when I was really young - but of course, this led to a bit of a hierarchy, where those of us who picked up the instrument later (around age 11?) were compared to those who had started training in the Suzuki method from far, far younger, having been specially selected, and given the best instruments. Now, I know not to compare myself to others - just to look at my own progress.

I've been making a recording of my playing most days since I started (almost 2 weeks now), and plan on go back and listening to them again to see how I improve. By the way Shell, I checked out your blog and was inspired by the progress you show in your videos!

I had a tuner on my iPhone called Tux Tuner which was pretty easy to use, but now that I've switched to a FireFox phone, I'm finding the Instrument Tuner software on my computer the most hassle free (obviously not good for on-the-go, but I certainly won't be performing anywhere outside of my home for a good long while yet!). Thanks for the recommendation of the snark tuner kylesito. It seems as if Amazon has a lot of really good stuff, but unfortunately, the shipping costs to Australia are absolutely astronomical So I'll probably stick with my PC and iPhone set up for now, and check out local music stores if I get more serious.

Thanks for the help getting started Fiddlerman, and for the warm welcome!