About Me

Hello. My name is Rick.

Long ago, when I graduated high school, my dream was to become a professional jazz trumpet player. I knew that I wasn't nearly as good as my jazz heroes, but I naively assumed that college music school would transform me into a "great" player. Unfortunately, after two years at two different college music schools, I was only marginally better, and I could see that neither school had the potential to take my playing to the next level. Frankly, neither school that I attended had much of a jazz curriculum beyond combo and big band classes at that time.

Frustrated by my lack of progress, I quit playing the trumpet and changed my major to finance. During my first year as a finance major, I had a business idea and taught myself computer programming in order to make it a reality. That business idea didn't actually go anywhere, but it did inspire another idea, which led to the eventual co-founding of my first tech startup.

Seven years later, I decided to try playing the trumpet again. Around this same time, I started working for another tech startup. My workload was intense, but I always found time to practice, even if it was only 15-30 minutes a day. About a year later, in 2003, I created this website in order to share my journey back on the horn.

When I started playing the trumpet again, I knew that my biggest weakness was ear training. At the time, I was unable to play anything by ear, but nearly every jazz recording had examples of great musicians playing by ear (for example, when somebody repeats a phrase played by the previous soloist). I couldn't find any good ear training tools, at least none that offered call-and-response exercises, so I built one myself, and shared it on this site in 2004. The current version is this online ear trainer.

In 2013, after nearly twenty years in the tech industry, I was burned out and ready for a change. Eventually, I moved to Manhattan, where I decided to devote myself full-time to music, so I could finally get the jazz education that I never received back when I was in college.

My pursuit of a jazz education led me to Garry Dial, whom I've been studying with since 2019. Those lessons have changed my musical life. I'm still not "great," but I just might finally be "doing all right." Ha.

THIS SITE'S NAME

I named this site after the George Gershwin tune "I Was Doing All Right." I first heard this tune when I was in college, on Dexter Gordon's album "Doin' Allright." I loved everything about that album, and it quickly became one of my all time favorite jazz albums. When it came time to name this site, "I Was Doing All Right" seemed a like a good name, largely due to its various interpretations for me as "comeback" trumpet player. Looking back, I suppose a shorter (or jazz-specific) domain name would have been better. Oh well. If you like, you can also access this site using rickjazz.com.