Can anyone help me with how to go about learning tones?
I generally tend to remember pinyin yet mix up the tones for most words.
Can skritter app help with it?
Do i need to listen a lot of mandarin to learn the tones?
Is the app really useful for tones the way it is for character writing ?

I think you just need to hear it alot, and try to say it after you hear it.

I don't always do that though cos its easier to just skritter in silence especially when I'm skrittering in a public place and don't want all the Chinese people to think I'm crazy for randomly saying random syllables out-loud.

But Chinese people probably already think foreigners are crazy, so its probably not a big deal :P

I don't try to bother too much about trying to remember which character has which tone, but just try to remember how to pronounce it. I think this is a good way to go because I once asked a Chinese friend what tone a character was and she really had to think, seems like its not something Chinese learn by rote either.

Also I remember John Pasden from Chinesepod saying not to worry about remembering which character has which tone but just listening to the music of the language.

Yep, I find it just as useful for tones as it is for writing.

There are tricks; mnemonics if you wish. I associate each tone to a specific colour with a specific hand-gesture. First tone is green, with a sweeping gesture with my thumb. Second tone is blue, with the gesture of my index finger rising towards the blue sky... etc.

Find what works for you and stick with it, because it's reinforced every time you use it.

I agree with Paddy365's point about listening to words as a whole or in wider 'musical' context. When Skritter tests me on a tone, I listen to myself saying it aloud or in my head (in whatever context I learned it in) to work out the answer.

@Sentient
That's useful. One thing to note when making up a system like this is that MDBG and Skritter, amongst others, use a specific set of tone colours (red,yellow,green,blue) so it would probably help to use those.

Pinyin without tones is not Pinyin. Did you perhaps mean that you remember the phonetics, but not the tones? Or that you can read tones fine with pinyin, but not characters?

Yes Skritter can help with tones, because there's a specific test for tones. It helps to speak/mumble/silently say each word with the correct tone as you answer it

Re:
"I don't try to bother too much about trying to remember which character has which tone, but just try to remember how to pronounce it."
May I respectfully say that if you are not using the right tone then you are not pronouncing correctly.

Also, I'm not sure what John Pasden said or meant, but I'm sure he did not mean that tones can be ignored.

Of course the numbers assigned to the tones are completely arbitrary. No reason why a flat level tone should be first tone; it could have been called second, third, or fourth. So I think that saying the character x has the nth tone is completely non-intuitive. (at least the tone marks in Pinyin follow the contour of the sound.) This is where the "music" comes in. You have to be able to hear the tone. I think this is why the native speaker in the example above had to think about which tone a certain word had. I'm sure the native speaker would have no problem getting the tone right if reading the character aloud.

I agree with the suggestions above about generating the sound with correct tone in your imagination, reading silently, or saying aloud. I know Pimsleur makes the point about the importance of NOT just "thinking" the words or sentences but actually saying them aloud, and I think that's good advice.

I also like the color system. I have Skritter and Pleco set up to use the color scheme invented / advocated by Nathan Dummitt. My theory is that once you learn to associate each tone with a given color it becomes unconscious reinforcement each time you see the character displayed in the corresponding color.
In a way the color coding serves the same purpose as tone marks in Pinyin.

To answer the questions:
1. Can Skritter app help with it? Yes. Try using the settings to test tones for a while.
2. Do I need to listen to a lot of Mandarin to learn the tones? Yes, every chance you get.
2. Is the app useful for tones the way it is for character writing? Maybe. There are other sites / software that let you record your own voice and play it back, whereas Skritter is primarily designed for reading/writing, not listening / speaking. That said, try using the tone testing in Skritter for a while and see how it goes. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Thanks all for inputs. I can agree that Skritter is pretty addictive for sure.
I have pretty much bought the new Ipad just to skritter.

Tones are tricky. I spent a year studying Thai -- with 5 months in a Thai University in Thailand-- a tonal language, and, a few months ago, came to the realization, after doing a lot of Skrittering and studying Japanese, that I never used tones! I spent a year speaking the language without even being aware of how bad my pronunication was. If you are coming from a non-tonal background it will be difficult to learn the proper tones.

@ podster

Most of the responses are by native English speakers, speakers of a language that is not tonal. You have to take all the answers with a grain of salt.