The Oz Ukuele Method Available 8/4
by Dr. Erol Ozsever
The Oz Ukulele Method is set to release on August 4th, 2020 and is the second book in “The Oz Method” collection. As a musician in the 21st century, the internet has provided independent musicians, artists, authors, etc. with new resources for entrepreneurship. This however doesn’t come without its challenges. I was fortunate enough to collaborate with F-Flat Books to publish and digitally distribute The Oz Guitar Method and The Oz Ukulele Method. But doing so involved a great deal of tech savvy on my part with a relatively steep learning curve. I designed the cover of the Oz Ukulele Method using Adobe Photoshop to recreate the design from The Oz Guitar Method that my friend Shellie Terry designed. I then wrote the body content using MuseScore, which is fantastic free software and is an inexpensive alternative to Finale or Sibelius. Needless to say, formatting this book took a lot of time and patience, and lots of watching YouTube tutorials on MuseScore. Then I had to export the body content as a PDF document, which creates a whole slew of compatibility issues with Adobe In-Design. After lots of Reddit forums and YouTube videos, I realized that PDFs are much easier to edit using Adobe Acrobat Pro. Not just the standard reader, but Acrobat Pro. So I subscribed to the entire Adobe Creative Suite. Once I imported the PDF into Acrobat Pro, I could then add all the photos I wanted, rearrange text boxes, and clean up the formatting of the document overall.
Lastly the decision came to name these books The Oz Method. After consulting with my marketing friends, they asked me, “what makes this book different?” I got technical with them about motor skills and educational psychology. They said that was all well and good, but getting too technical for beginners may scare people away. One of them said that I was fun and engaging and that my communication style and rapport with my students is what makes me a good teacher, so this book is designed to give people a glimpse into what it’s like in my classroom.
Whether we like it or not, as creators in the 21st century, we need to be able to do everything. Play the instrument. Teach lessons and classes. Develop the curriculum. Learn the software. Format the text. Design the cover art. Touch up the photos. Market our work. Sell our work. Yes, this is a lot of work, but 20 years ago, all of this would have been far too cost-prohibitive. We can each use the tools and technology of the 21st century to forge our own career paths.
You can find The Oz Ukulele Method in paperback on Amazon.com and eBook at http://www.fflat-books.com.
