Rick is a highly versatile audio professional and educator with an extensive background in music, audio engineering, and innovative business management. Growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada, Rick developed a passion for music at an early age and learned to play piano, drums, and trumpet by the time he was 12 years old. Eventually, he picked up the guitar and it quickly became his main instrument. Shortly thereafter, Rick was playing guitar in various local bands and giving guitar lessons at music stores before moving to Hollywood, CA to attend Musicians Institute when he was 19. As a graduate of Musicians Institute’s Guitar, Audio Engineering, and Film programs, and a recipient of a Fender Guitar scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music’s summer program, Rick has gone on to achieve excellence across multiple disciplines throughout his professional career.

Rick started teaching at Musicians Institute in 2000 and has recently written several courses for the Audio Engineering program. He is also a published author of two advanced Music Technology titles for Hal Leonard’s
Power Tools series of books, “Power Tools for Pro Tools and Power Tools for Logic Pro,” and he hosted Alfred Publishing’s music production video titled “Choosing the Right DAW for You.”

From 2010 to 2020, Rick held key executive roles for two groundbreaking audio technology startup companies, Audionamix and AudioSourceRE. Rick was directly involved in pioneering the now burgeoning field of Audio Source Separation and has spearheaded countless collaborations with several major motion picture, television, and music studios around the world, including Disney, Warner Bros, NBC Universal, Deluxe Media Entertainment, Universal Music Group, APM, and Sony to name a few. As an audio source separation specialist, Rick has been a major contributing engineer on multiple projects for legendary producers, composers, and artists such as Hans Zimmer, David Foster, Jay Landers, Rod Stewart, Barbara Streisand, Barry Manilow, Natalie Cole, the Leonard Bernstein Foundation, and many others.

In 2012, Rick and his hand-picked production team of all MI graduates, were nominated for a Technical Grammy for their exceptional work on Barbara Streisand’s “Mother and Child” from her Release Me album. Rick was also the product visionary at Audionamix for multiple award-winning plugins and stand-alone software applications, including NAMM’s coveted “Best of Show” award in 2014. Rick has also been invited to be a featured guest speaker and presenter at AES, NAMM, and NAB trade show events in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, Nashville, and Paris, France.

Rick owns and operates “Mixed Emotions Productions,” a modest production facility and creative space, located in Studio City, where he has engineered and mixed projects for world-class musicians such as Jeff Richman, Paul Gilbert, Dweezil Zappa, Mike Kenealy, Scott Henderson, Joe Elliot, Jeff Bowders, Gaby Moreno, Michael Elsner, and many more. He currently teaches Mixing Essentials 1, 2, and 3, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, and Recording Techniques 1 & 2.

For additional achievements and credits, visit RIXILVA.COM.