My first introduction to music was singing. I did a lot of sport as a kid and developed nodules on my vocal chords because I screamed a lot, so my parents took me to a singing teacher to learn how to project my voice without damaging my vocal chords. When I was eight, they enrolled me in Yamaha piano classes and bought us a piano. 

Andrew Bain

Andrew Bain. Photo supplied

I got into the specialist music program at Brighton High School (a secondary school in Adelaide), playing piano, and had to take up a second instrument. Originally the school was going to put me onto trombone, but I wasn’t too thrilled about that. Growing up, I liked the sound of the French horn, so they said, “Why don’t you play that?” and it turned out to be a really good instrument for me.

Physically, the horn is a very long piece of tubing with a very small mouthpiece, so accuracy for horn players is always challenging. It has a range of four octaves so just to be able to cover that while...