robert waddington

Robert Waddington is a multi-instrumentalist who focuses primarily on guitar and bass and stays often within the modern jazz genre. Born in Providence, RI and moved to New York City at the age of 20, Robert was exposed to many different styles and types of music. Robert's early influences were bands like King Crimson, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the like. As time moved on, Robert branched into jazz with a strong leaning towards the "straight ahead" styles of Mile and Coltrane. Later, Robert began to listen to Pat Metheny, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery and other innovators on the guitar. Especially interesting to Robert was the pursuit of that elusive "clean tone" of the aforementioned players. This focused on a playing that was devoid of effects and heavy processing and lead to a strict attention to playing technique. Being mainly self taught has enabled Robert to avoid many of the formulaic and boring "rules" of modern music. While having its drawbacks (the lack of complexity in certain songs as well as depth and proper counter point), being self taught has infused a certain freedom that releases the music from following any easily categorized place. Some of the aspects of Robert's sound is the fact that he uses little compression in his music, preferring the warm and rich sounds so prevalent in the heyday of the fusion era. Robert has no problem with calling fusion music "fusion", that?s what it is.