He won scholarships to study with Margaret Eliot at the Royal Academy of Music (at 12) and later under Terence MacDonagh at the Royal College of Music (at 16), where he won the Joy Boughton Memorial Prize in only his second year of study.
Roy was also a member of the Deutz Trio, alongside Paul Edmund-Davies (flute) and John Alley (piano), with whom he recorded four CDs.
He has also given master-classes in Italy and coached the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and was on the panel for the LSO Shell Scholarship for eighteen years.
He is currently Professor of Oboe in the Talent Music Master Courses programme Archived 26 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine in Brescia, Italy.
Carter has also played the music to numerous popular recordings and films, Including Star Wars Episodes I, II, III, and V, Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets, Braveheart, Nanny McPhee, and Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance.