GARRY Walker is pounding the beat. That is not a comment on the conducting style of the RSNO's young principal guest conductor who, at 30, commands the No 2 post in Scotland's biggest symphony orchestra. It's a reference to what he calls the ''shoe-leather'' side of his new job. In the past two months, Edinburgh-born Walker has made around 15 ''house calls'' to business societies, universities, colleges, music clubs and societies, friends' associations and support groups. If he could make more time, he'd go further. ''God, I'd love to get into every school music class in Scotland.''

What's he up to? Proselytising? Drumming up business? Trying to increase the audience for his orchestra? Sell tickets? Shouldn't conductors just conduct? Be seen (only from behind) and not heard? That isn't Walker's way. Walker is a talker, an unstoppable enthusiast for the music that is his passion as much as his job. He burns to communicate. He always has, since the day I met him, shortly after he won the Leeds Conducting Competition, when nobody knew him, he had little experience, no job, no influence, no outlet for his ideas and he wasn't even sure if he wanted to conduct in the first place.

Now he is an established figure, with prestigious guest conducting engagements accruing, at home and abroad, posts as permanent guest conductor with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, artistic director of the Paragon Ensemble and, critically, the RSNO job, perhaps the one where he can really start to develop plans that have been seething in his mind.

Last season, on the first official night of his new appointment, he spoke to his audience, promising them ''something challenging in every programme'', and inviting them to propose their own ideas and suggestions; not exactly common practice among conductors.

Everybody assumed that, by ''something challenging'', he meant contemporary music. To a degree, they were right. Walker clearly has a skill in that area, and, at the very start of the RSNO's current season, took the music of Sciarrino and Sally Beamish to Perth, turned to face his audience, quipped that the doors were locked, chatted a little about the pieces of music, used the orchestra to illustrate the sound worlds and broke rather a lot of ice with a naturally suspicious audience through his articulate and easy-going delivery.

That, in part, is what he's up to:

to establish contact with his audience, let them get to know him, build up patterns of trust - ''that will take years'' - and lead them into musical territory with which they are unfamiliar.

He's going to do it next week in the heartland of RSNO territory, the weekly winter season concerts in Glasgow and Edinburgh, with a

programme entitled Four Seasons with a Twist, featuring two repertoire classics: Copland's Appala-chian Spring and Richard Strauss's autumnal Four Last Songs, interlaced with The Seasons by John Cage (possibly the scariest name

on the contemporary roster) and

the Cantus Arcticus by the Finn, Rautavaara, who has incorporated a veritable aviary of real and

imitative birdsong into his orchestral piece.

''Look, with the exception of the Rautavaara'' - which, incidentally, sounds like Vaughan Williams if you extract the birdsong - ''the most contemporary piece on the programme is probably the Strauss.

''I can assure any member of the audience that there is hardly a dissonant note in this programme. The Cage, a ballet score, is beautiful. It's not angular. It's not disjointed. I picked it as it goes hand-in-glove with Appalachian Spring. Gesturally, they're very similar, though the philosophy behind them is radically different.

''If I am going to be trusted on this issue of bringing contemporary music to people, I'm going to be reasonably conservative. I'm just encouraging people to come and hear something new to them,

something with which they are

unfamiliar.''

That's the point he wants to

hammer home. This is not Garry Walker laying down a manifesto about cutting-edge, squeaky-gate, avant-garde music. Symphony orchestras have become associated with a fairly narrow band of traditional, orthodox repertoire which is endlessly recycled though myriad interpretations.

Walker is acutely aware of libraries of music out there, approachable music, which gathers dust because nobody wants to bite the bullet, and because managements are paranoid about the box office (which is a bit rich when you consider that the bullet-proof combination in last week's RSNO concerts, featuring chief conductor Alexander Lazarev in dynamite form with Mahler's colossal blockbuster Sixth Symphony, played to half-empty houses in both Glasgow and Edinburgh).

Walker wants to broaden the palette, which is why he is out there, tramping the streets, doing the rounds, telling people about it. ''You don't go to the cinema to see the same film over and over again. You don't go to a library and take the same book out every time. You don't go to the same restaurant every day and eat exactly the same food. I want people to hear great works of music that are rarely performed; and there is absolutely no reason to keep them rarely performed.''

So he'll talk about them a bit, ''just a little; it must not be a lecture; just to give a few landmarks, a feeling for the direction and the sound of the music. Just come and hear something a bit different''.

There'll be more later in the season from the man who wants to broaden horizons, including music by John Adams and the completely unknown Piano Concerto by American Lou Harrison.

''People will absolutely adore the Harrison concerto,'' says Walker. ''If you like Brahms, you'll enjoy it. If you like film music, you'll enjoy it. If you like world music, you'll enjoy

it. If you like jazz, you'll enjoy it.

It's one of the most approachable modern pieces I've ever come across, with a riotous second movement entitled Stampede.''

Despite the torrential enthusiasm, Walker is deadly serious in his purpose. He's determined to put his money where his mouth is. Liter-ally. He has started saying ''no'' to conducting invitations. He has become pretty well established now. Good quality conducting work is coming in further in advance, and in plentiful supply. So he is being more selective in order to create more space for the shoe-leather work that means so much to him, for building contacts, establishing trust and developing a community with his Scottish audience, in order to draw them towards less familiar musical terrain.

''It's not glamorous work. I just want to get on with what I believe in, which is often thoroughly unspectacular. I don't think many conductors do it, if I'm honest, but it's what's important to me - energising people. Yes, it's long-term. Yes, it will take a long, long time. But I'm just 30. There really is no hurry.''

Garry Walker conducts Four

Seasons with a Twist: Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Thursday, November 25; Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Friday 26. Both at 7.30pm.