Less than six months ago, they had never picked up a violin. But tomorrow night, children from Stirling's Raploch estate are to perform in an orchestral concert in the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh.

Fifteen children from the estate, the first to study in Britain under the acclaimed Venezuelan El Sistema method, will play tomorrow night at the venue, after being invited by Alexander McCall Smith, the leading Scottish writer.

McCall Smith, writer of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, is using the music venue to launch his new novel, which has a musical theme, and a group of the children from the Raploch estate, aged from six to eight years old, will be performing for the 400-strong audience at a major concert venue for the first time.

The Big Noise Raploch Children's Orchestra is the first in Scotland to be set up in a project inspired by the El Sistema method of the oil-rich but economically divided south American country.

Around 200 children from primary one to four, have been taught the fundamentals of stringed instrument playing with violins, double bass and cello, first in a summer school and now in intense, thrice-weekly training sessions.

Since summer, children from Raploch Primary and Our Lady's Primary on the estate have been learning to play orchestral instruments and tomorrow night they will play a short set, demonstrating their mastery of the violins and singing as well as performing a short work called Chocolate Treats.

It is hoped that the success of the music system in Stirling - which relies on the free distribution of instruments, free tuition and intensive, group-based musical teaching centred around the idea of teamwork and the ensemble - will spread to other areas in Scotland, with the first cities in line thought to be Aberdeen and Glasgow.

For more than 30 years in Venezuela, the system of youth orchestras has taught more than 400,000 children from the barrios, or slums.

The Raploch area, although not afflicted by poverty to the same extent as the slums of Venezuela, has had a reputation as an area of deprivation, and 50% of the children in the Big Noise have received social work provision.

Rising musical stars such as 26-year-old maestro Gustavo Dudamel, now a conductor at the LA Philharmonic and patron of the Raploch scheme, came through the system.

McCall Smith decided to invite the Raploch children to the event through his friend Peter Stevenson, who is chairman of the writer's Really Terrible Orchestra as well as a board member of the Big Noise.

The writer, whose latest novel, La's Orchestra Saves the World, is launched on the night, said: "I knew he was excited about the prospect of the children playing on the night and I am too. They will be playing Chocolate Treats - they are bound to play it much better than we can.

"It is so good because it is a musical project that shows how important music can be. It is a wonderful venue and they will be about 450 people there which will be very exciting for them. The Big Noise project sounds like a wonderful thing and you can only imagine the benefits it will bring to so many."

McCall Smith whose book follows an amateur orchestra from 1936, the lead up to the Second World War, and 1962, the Cuban missile crisis, said he had not yet decided whether he would play with his orchestra, although he may play a little on the sousaphone, a large wind instrument.

Jennifer Nicholson, one of the musicians teaching the children, said: "They are children so that don't have any baggage about playing a concert in a proper concert hall: they just think, great, it's another trip'. We did play at a teacher's concert and they were high as kites afterwards.

"They have had remarkable development, and they are still only tiny, primary school children. It has been a great experience so far, considering they only got instruments in their hands in June."

The social and artistic benefits of the intensive classical music tuition system are being picked up in other countries. In England, £2m has gone to a three-year scheme based on the Venezuelan experience and Italy, Germany and Spain look set to follow.

Stirling's Big Noise orchestra will grow with the children, recruiting new, younger members every year.

Nicola Killean, Big Noise director, said: "We have been spending time on fundamental techniques and the change has been unbelievable. Right now we are still working on open strings' and one finger, but once those second and third fingers are down on the strings, we will be playing some proper music.

"It has been going well. It has also been a very challenging year - but I could not have dreamt how successful we have been up to this point."