2022: A Year In Review | TQW#6

This year has been a massive one for me. Some of my businesses closed, some new ventures started, lots of personal growth and insights. Also, thankfully, lots of amazing holidays…I have really missed them.

I thought it would be a nice roundup to include my annual review in the Quiet Whisper Newsletter.

---

💌 What’s In This Issue?

1. Highlights
2. Things I’ve Learnt
3. Some of my Placements
4. Quote of the year

Support Rich & buy him a few coffees

---

⚡️Highlights

1. Recording my music at Abbey Road Studio 2

This was a bit of an unexpected joy. And to be quite honest it wasn’t something that was ever even on my bucket list. It’s one of those places that all musicians are aware of because well, you know.

When it was mentioned to me that we would be recording there my first thought was, “Hey, that would be cool!”

Then it gradually dawned on me that it was a pretty major milestone in my career.

Like the first time I had my music recorded with a live orchestra. This was like a rite of passage.

The best thing was how incredibly smooth everything went. Even down to the coffee.

I wrote an article about the lessons I learnt from recording in Abbey Road if you are interested.

It is a completely magical thing to have your music played by what is probably hundreds of thousands of hours of combined practice and it shows.

2. The Trailer Music School having its most successful year to date

My main website, The Trailer Music School, has over the years received inconsistent attention from me.

I built it to teach people everything I know about producing trailer music. I have never been in it to make big bucks. It was for a very long time purely a passion project.

I wanted to share my knowledge and passion and if I could get paid for it then what a bonus.

This year however I decided to actually put some time into making it a more comprehensive education platform and blog. Plus with the addition of almost all of my Protege courses it began to perform well.

Really well.

I am absolutely loving what I have built and what it has done for its audience. I am loving seeing students/listeners/fans getting placements and taking their music careers to the next level.

I feel honoured that my content could even be a tiny part of that.

3. Interviewing Christian Henson

Ever since I downloaded Spitfire Audio’s Albion I have been a huge fan.

Even before that when I would listen to Christian’s score to Severance as inspiration for horror movie scores.

So when I was given the opportunity to have him as a guest on the podcast I jumped at the chance.

It was an amazing interview and I had a lot of fun.

My highlight was when Christian started talking about not needing to work all the time and it being better for his productivity and mental health.

I couldn’t agree more.

4. Learning to Solve a Rubik’s Cube

I am not going to go on about this much but spending the time to learn how to solve these little puzzles was not only tremendously satisfying but also really relaxing.

Now I can be one of those people who pick up a Rubik’s cube and just solve it, put it back down on the table and look around the room nonchalantly.

No big deal. I’m just that cool. [nerd]

5. Launching my newsletter The Quiet Whisper

I spent quite a lot of my time in 2021 writing.

None of it ever saw the light of day.

I even recorded that writing as audio with music.

It was my time for creativity and reflection that served no purpose other than to bring me back into my own flow and I LOVED IT!

As the months went by a little voice kept niggling at the back of my mind to continue doing that work.

When another message from the universe showed me a YouTube video about newsletters I was adamant that that was what form this project could take.

I would launch my own newsletter and call it The Quiet Whisper after the little voice that has driven so much of my creative decisions.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much I enjoy creating it.

---

🎓 Some Things I Learnt

Achieving goals is not the be all and end all. What is more important is to ask yourself, “are you being the person you want to be?”

Staying true to yourself is incredibly important.

It’s also one of those annoying things that people say you should do but it is actually really hard to do.

Like “stop worrying”.

“Oh when you say that…”

I mean how do you actually make sure that every single action you do is not influenced by your mood, emotions, thoughts, other people, culture, subconscious etc?

How do you make sure that your decision to respond to an email in a certain way is not influenced by the anger you feel, or that you decision not to work is not influenced by a deep lack of confidence.

This stuff fascinates me. How do we become those people that we hope or even wished we could be and also make sure that we still keep ourselves at the core.

Although it is a very hard concept to make manifest, it is and can be super fun and insightful.

I have not found a foolproof way to do this but I have found a few things that have helped me to either stay true to myself or to realign and come back to what I feel is meaningful.

One of the biggest ways I have found is to journal.

I’ve been journaling since I was a teenager (on and off anyway).

It wasn’t until I discovered morning pages from the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (affiliate link) back in 2010 that I really found how healing it could be.

Just to dip your toes into journaling in this way, in the morning, start writing every single thought that pops into your head, and keep doing this with absolutely no filter for 3 sides.

At first the type of stuff you write is hilarious but somehow you manage to steer it to something that needs your attention and even sometimes find a beautiful resolve.

Well worth your time and attention if you are at all interested in healing, creativity and spirituality - which if you have signed up to this I am sure you are.

Habit Stacking is incredibly useful for doing those things that align with who you want to be

Habit stacking is basically when you tack one habit onto an already established habit.

For example, after I have brushed my teeth I will floss.

This was pretty much the basis for Hal Elrod’s amazing book, The Miracle Morning (affiliate link).

However when you combine habit stacking with the question, “What activities are aligned with the person I want to be?” you suddenly expose something quite special.

You then are more able to do those things that are aligned with the highest version of yourself. Thereby reenforcing this positive vision of you.

---

🎬 Some of the placements I landed this year:

Here is a little selection of the placements I landed this year. It’s been a pretty great year for my music and I feel very blessed.

ARCHIVE 81 - Official TrailerI am so chuffed to hear this track getting a placement. It was one of the tracks from Throat 4 by Elephant Music that was quite heavy onthe throat singing and vocal percussion. I think it works absolute wonders inthis trailer.

THE CURSED - TrailerIn this trailer you can hear my cue Altar from Throat 4. I love it when atrailer has lots of space for the sounds and music to come through and this onedoes a beautiful job. I will admit this looks terrifying and probably won’t watch it (too scary)

1883 - Official TrailerSo chuffed to land another trailer with my track ‘Tomb’ from Throat 4. A reallynice boost of confidence as I am currently writing the next instalment of theThroat series!

THE QUARRY - Announcement Trailer2KMUSIC - “TOMB” BY RICHARD PRYNReally chuffed with this placement. One of my tracks from Throat 4 featuring alot of throat singing. And yes, this is another very scary trailer. I do find it funny how manytrailers I land that I find almost too scary to

A VERY BRITISH SCANDAL: SEASON 2 - Official Trailer“SANCTUARY” BY RICHARD PRYNI am sooo very proud of this trailer. I wrote this track as part of a course for Protege Pro [https://protege.school]. I was teaching the students how to writesolo string led trailer music and it is incredibly affirming to my

MAN VS BEE Trailer | NETFLIX“CAUSALITY”Yes, it’s that track again. One of those gifts that keeps on giving. I am veryblessed to have had this track used on several trailers to date. This one isawesome. I grew up watching Rowan Atkinson in Black Adder and Mr. Bean, so I

THE LOST KING Trailer | PatheFor those of you who don’t know, I love dowsing/divining and have done manycourses in it. This was a very famous case in the dowsing community as she foundKing Richard using remote dowsing. I love this trailer and I love how they used one of my neoclassical

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER Trailer | Amazon PrimePretty chuffed to have landed this one. I grew up being read the Hobbit and LOTRbooks and of course the LOTR movies were a pretty big deal. Love hearing myThroat track set within the world of Tolkien. #blessed

PARAMOUNT’S YELLOWSTONE SEASON 5 | Official TrailerI think that this is the third time I have landed music on a Yellowstone trailerand this one has to be my favourite. This track, Rosetta, is one of my trailerised string quartet tracks. The idea for this album was pretty much to approach it like a guitarist; riffs

HALO INFINITE: WINTER UPDATE | Launch TrailerThis is my track Brick and I was lucky enough to have it featured on thisawesome launch trailer. If you are interested in how I wrote the music you can check out the videobelow. I know a lot of you like these walkthroughs and to be honest I

---

❝ Quote Of The Year

“It’s so easy to endlessly delay and postpone the experiences that would so enrich our lives. We think we’re not ready. We fear we’re not prepared. We cannot stand the thought that there is one little piece of information we’re missing that, if we had it, would make all the difference.”

- from “Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential” by Tiago Forte

---

❤️ Enjoy this newsletter?

Forward to a friend and let them know where they can subscribe (hint: it’s here). You could even buy me some coffees (kind of) by becoming a paid member.

Support Rich & buy him a few coffees

Anything else? Hit reply to send me feedback or say hello.