Waller studied clarinet in Long Beach, California with Fred Ohlendorf, Ralph Sarber and Hoyt Mosher.
He was principal clarinetist of the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra in 1949–1950, after which, on the advice of Leonard Bernstein that a musician should also "get a good education", he enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles, where he graduated in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music.
[1] Waller traveled with Rudolf and the CSO on a round-the-world-tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department in 1966 and on tour in Japan with music director Jesús López-Cobos in 1990.
Waller played under four CSO music directors, Rudolf, Thomas Schippers, Michael Gielen and Lopez-Cobos, as well as Cincinnati Pops conductor Erich Kunzel.
Owners of his paintings include Gil Shaham, Ann-Marie McDermott and Michael Lubin, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Colorado Public Radio president Max Wysick.
In 2014, he opened a gallery on historic Court Street in Cincinnati Ohio, Dick Waller's ArtPlace, where he also maintained a studio.
He taught a class called "For the Love of Music" at the University of Cincinnati's Osher Life Learning Institute, and he worked on a series of one-minute spots for public radio consisting of funny stories by musicians.