Barely a year had passed when Waller gained the attention of the Conductor and Music Director of a significant metropolitan orchestra, who expressed that in his 30 years on the podium, and in the classroom, he had never before encountered such native talent in someone who was self-taught. He subsequently encouraged Waller to enroll in a degree program. He was immediately placed in the Music Department's final semester courses.  Soon after, the maestro invited him to become his sole private pupil, gratis, and hired him as Conductor's Assistant with the symphony. A solid friendship quickly grew between the maestro and his pupil, based on mutual esteem and a deep love of music, and Waller found himself taken into the warmth of his mentor's family. "My mentor was a genius, and that's a word I don't toss around because it is so over-used nowadays. Through his integrity, his passionate devotion to music and his selfless, sensitive guidance of my musical evolution, I acquired more education than I could at any university. He taught me more than music as a textbook subject -- he taught me about life, music as life, art as life, and myself as an artist. He took what I instinctively knew and gave it a name. I'm reminded of the scene in "The Miracle Worker" when Annie Sullivan finally teaches Helen Keller the word for 'water'. It is not an overstatement for me to say, that is what my mentor did for me, only with music."

Waller's music, which centers on harmony and classical symmetry, is made up of memorable melodies and playful themes  drawn from the vitality and simplicity of folk music. His slow movements are tender, sometimes plaintive and full of longing, while his faster movements are almost childlike, though never boisterous.  More somber moments evoke deep, mystical feelings and, although one can sense his affinity with the Classical era, one may also hear the sustained chords, pedal tones, and progressions he assimilated through the Rock and Folk music of the Sixties and Seventies. "The Beatles, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, the Electric Light Orchestra, the Alan Parsons Project, and Rick Wakeman all influenced me. My path as a musician has been a steady, straightforward climb from the music of my youth to what I am composing today. Some have teasingly called me a mystic, but I believe that to be an artist in any medium one must be at least part mystic, or magician, or alchemist, or something, because we create sense, order, and beauty from a sea of chaos. I live with one foot in one world and one foot in quite another. I'm not always sure which is the most solid and I think this shows in my music."