''I PLAY the guitar even before I clean my teeth,'' says Robin Harper. ''I keep a guitar by the side of the bed and when my wife gets up to make coffee in the morning, I do three or four minutes of guitar practice.''

It's the only way the Green MSP for the Lothians can keep up the music which has played such a key role in his life.

Mr Harper didn't begin the guitar until he was a student at Aberdeen University, but he quickly made up for lost time. While other students strummed along to the Beatles, Harper went from folk to classical to jazz and his semi-professional career bloomed.

He was one of the first resident musicians at Henderson's restaurant in Edinburgh and a member of two bands: Rhythm Method, a jazz band (posters featured prams carrying instruments) and then Fourth Estate, which he remembers as ''immensely successful'' (it did the music for two productions at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Theatre and performed on TV). One of his proudest achievements was the establishment of the Edinburgh Classical Guitar Society, which hosted most major classical guitarists in Europe and the US.

But teaching music has played an even bigger part in Mr Harper's life than performance. An English teacher by profession, he has taught the guitar to scores of Scottish schoolchildren in after school clubs and children's theatres, and for 30 years he has taught at Avril Bankworth's National Music Camps in Milton Keynes.

In the 40 years he has been teaching, he estimates that he may have taught more than 3000 people to play the guitar. As a result, he has become a strong advocate of giving children the chance to try live performance.

''I think it's a birthright, like reading or writing. I think people should be able to read music by the time they're six.''

Oddly, given his lifelong love affair with the guitar, Mr Harper abandons it in favour of the piano when it comes to his own dream performance: he hankers to play any two of Chopin's waltzes to concert standard.

With only four minutes per day scheduled for practice, that may be a vain ambition. But there could be a chance to see Mr Harper, as he and his parliamentary colleagues are planning to perform at the Edinburgh Festival.