At last, we delve into the realms beyond the powerchord and the MIDI lead to find out how you can get all philharmonic without tears. Our bowing and blowing expert, John Lewis, takes a long hard look at the orchestral alternative.

A nightmare. You have hit that low in morale where your Euro-metal guitar and NG 5BX keyboard, you realise, don't make all the noises you want. You can't afford to hire the local symphonia to put a little mood onto the portastudio and you are forced to consider making use of an instrument, previously dismissed as orchestral, classical or just acoustic. But where to start?

They are so many, so diverse and complicated looking. Are they expensive? Do Aria make a trombone? How do I avoid getting one as bad as my first electric guitar was? And one of the most common questions: "What is the easiest instrument to learn?"

Obviously, it is equally hard to play any instrument well, but it is easier to get away with being a mediocre player of some instruments than others. This applies, as far as some people are concerned, to the saxophone. Invented in the middle of the last century by Adolph Sax, the saxophone ranks with the bicycle as the most civilized product of the industrial era. The prototype of the sax was produced by putting a bass clarinet mouthpiece onto a now obsolete brass instrument called the ophicleide, so although it is made of brass, its mouthpiece makes it an honorary woodwind instrument, grouped with the clarinet, flute (now also made out of metal) oboe, bassoon, etc. Its use was limited to military bands and comic effects until it became popular in dance bands, then jazz players started to reveal the breadth of its expression. The fuzz box was invented in an attempt to make the guitar sound like a sax, so perhaps there is an argument for part-exchanging your Eurometal for an old piece of Selmer plumbing.

As the bread and butter work for musicians shifted from being mainly in pit orchestras in music halls, cinemas, etc, to dance band work, many violinists took up the sax as an easy option for a second instrument to increase their chances of earning a living. The sax was considered easier because it overblows on the octave. This means that if you play a low G on a sax, then play the G an octave up your fingering remains the same except for an octave key at the back, operated by your thumb.

If you press the equivalent key on a clarinet it raises the note an octave and a half so you have to learn different sets of fingering for different octaves. In this respect, flute fingering is like the sax, it overblows on the octave (although on a flute there is no key, the octave is produced by blowing differently) which explains why so many sax players also play flute. The way of producing a note however is completely diffrent on the flute from the clarinet and sax, which have similar mouthpieces. If you can blow across an empty bottle and make a note, you should be able to get a reasonable noise from a flute.

If you doubt your ability to master the fingering on any of these instruments and don't want to spend more than £5 confirming your fears, then you could do worse than trying a recorder or tin whistle (in secret of course). The sax and flute fingerings are basically that of a recorder with lots of hardware added. Do not be put off by all the levers and keys which are put there to help not hinder the player. An acoustic guitar player can be equally disturbed by active electronics, parametrics, bulky tremoloes with locking nuts, fine tuners and half a dozen Allen keys to lose, although they are all intended to help him make sounds he otherwise couldn't.

The other type of woodwind are double reed instruments; oboes, etc, where the sound is produced by two reeds vibrating against each other, not one reed vibrating against a mouthpiece as on a clarinet or sax. The oboe fingering is again developed from a recorder, but they are too expensive for most pockets; a cheap oboe costs around £500 new. If you really want something that makes a double-reed sound, then a Shehnai, an Indian double-reed instrument might do the job for about £25.

If you categorise the sax as woodwind, then all the brass instruments are similar in terms of blowing and fingering techniques. The mouthpiece is a cup shape onto which you blow a raspberry (easy!). It is just a matter of scale and intensity; if a trumpet is constipated, then a trombone drinks too much home brew. It is variations of this raspberry blowing, called embouchure, which produces much of the range of a brass instrument as, in the main, they only have three valves giving only eight combinations for different notes. The slide positions on a trombone correspond loosely to valve combinations, most of the work is still done with the lips. A valve trombone does exist, but the slide is what gives the trombone its potential as an improvising instrument — listen to 'Love Lies' by Captain Beefheart.

If you prefer a mellow brass sound as opposed to the brashness of a trumpet, then the brass band equivalent is the cornet (it is the difference between a brass band and a fanfare, the choice is like choosing between a guitar with single coils and a guitar with humbuckers). Although the trumpet is more often used in a brass section because its sound cuts through more than a cornet, there have been notable jazz cornet soloists.

The other large orchestral category is the string section; violins, cellos, etc. They present less of a mystery to the guitar-weaned than any blown instrument — fretless guitars with different tunings and bows. A Kahler-loving friend of mine was surprised to discover that on a violin tailpiece fine tuners have been standard for a long time.

The thing most in favour of violins is that cheap ones are quite good and much cheaper than their equivalent quality in virtually any other instrument. However there is no point playing it just because it is cheap when, as William Kotzwinkle says: "... it makes the most horrible noises on the face of the earth, combining a cat's gut and horse's tail to produce fiendish screeching."

The cello sounds more tolerable and again I think you could get away with being an average cello player more than with some instruments, but they of course are more expensive.

Buying some of these instruments second hand can be more of a minefield than guitars. If you buy a second hand electric guitar, the chances are it has been made within the last 25 years. With wind and other string instruments they can be much older with all the attendant problems, and others besides.

For example, the recognised concert pitch is now lower than it was at the turn of the century, so if you buy an old sax or any old brass instrument with 'Low Pitch' stamped on it, it will be in tune with a modern instrument, but if it has no such stamp it was either made before the change in pitch or substantially afterwards, so it might be in tune or it might not.

There are also old and generally simpler systems of keywork on clarinet, flutes and oboes which would make them obsolete as far as the modern orchestral player is concerned, but it depends on your needs. Simple system clarinets are popular particularly in Ireland with folk musicians, and if you can manage with them, you may be able to pick one up much cheaper than a modern one. The chances are that you will also have to pay a repair bill though.

It is worth knowing that in many areas retailers have rental schemes whereby you can try an instrument over a period of 3 or 4 months at a fraction of its full price. This makes sense, particularly as the rental charge is usually deducted if you buy the instrument.

The following table is an attempt to sum up the prices of instruments of relative quality to a Hohner Strat copy at around £110 — a good instrument to learn on, though not something you'd feel happy gigging with regularly — and a Westone at around £200, a mid-range, mass produced, semi-pro instrument. As with other instruments their price will be roughly half for a second-hand instrument, depending on age and condition, so although saxes are one of the more expensive instruments (the Westone equivalent being £500-£600) you could get a serviceable but fairly old one for around £200.