I was listening to my Familiar and Unfamiliar playlist a few weeks ago and iTunes queued up "A Minor Variation" from Billy Joel's River of Dreams.
iTunes helpfully tells me that I added the album to my library 8 years ago - in June 2015 - but I've somehow never listened to that song until this year.
In fact, I've only listened to one other track on the album ("All About Soul").
I'm still thoroughly enjoying listening to my Familiar and Unfamiliar playlist.
The other day, Bonnie Raitt's "I Ain't Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again" came up. I love Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw and know them pretty well, but I'd never paid much attention to the piano on this track before.
It's really lovely, though, and moved me so much that I wondered who was playing.
I've been using iTunes (and the Music app) since it was released, and I've always loved it, but I've somehow never really made the most of it in all that time. Like so many things, I know there are a million things to learn and discover with this tool, and if I only had infinite time, I'm sure I could find more of them.
I first learned about The Scale Omnibus in spring of 2021 when the author, Francesco Balena, was giving away for free.
There's a new version out, and it still has hundreds of scales in dizzying quantity of variations, but now Balena has added more information about similar scales.
It's a bargain at 9 euros. If you'd like to get a sense of how it works, you can download a free excerpt.