>> Possibly doesn't help that I've never tuned a violin in my life.
>>
>> Obviously, having your instrument correctly tuned is crucially
>> important. So at school, the teacher always did that for us.
>
> Seems like a poor excuse for a teacher, then.  The point of playing in
> school isn't to sound good, but to learn how to play (which includes
> tuning the instrument).

Well, you know, we're talking about 9 year old kids here.

> Probably not, if you've never done this before.  But I'm surprised that
> you haven't, as I recall you say you played for years.

I played for about 2 years, total. And that was 20 years ago...

> But given your
> above comment that you've never tuned a violin before, it seems that your
> self-described "suckiness" at playing is attributable in a HUGE part to
> having a crap teacher who didn't actually teach you anything about
> playing the violin beyond "put your fingers here" and "move the bow like
> this".

Perhaps.

Then again, the violin is a very hard instrument to play. Basically, 
it's /sensitive/. That means that in experienced hands, you can do all 
this really expressive playing, which is what the violin is famous for 
of course. But because it's /sensitive/, it also means that in 
inexperienced hands, every slightly glitch is magnified drastically, and 
it sounds plain AWFUL! >_<

So far, I basically haven't used the E-string at all. The pressure of 
the bow on the string seems to be enough to put it out of tune. And as 
soon as I put a finger on it, it becomes almost completely mute.

Also, I have bruised fingertips now. :-/

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