Oasis Tell The Fans: Play It Yourself

Oasis are giving away their songs - as sheet music, reports Neil McCormick

As this week's incident at Toronto's V Festival demonstrated - when an interloper rushed the stage and tried to push Noel Gallagher off it - Oasis are still a band who inspire strong audience reaction.

Yet, despite the occasional bruising encounter, for the most part the Britpop giants' relationship with their fans is one of enormous affinity. It might be some time since they ruled the musical world, but each new Oasis album is greeted with anticipation by fans confident it will deliver more anthems they can wave their fists in the air and sing lustily along to. Just so long as they have paid for the privilege.

Oasis have aggressively positioned themselves against the growing trend to give away music free. In the face of widespread digital piracy, there have been various attempts by the music industry to commercialise the concept of free music, from Prince's newspaper cover-mount CD to Radiohead's name-your-own-price album download.

Liam Gallagher's response was to declare that Oasis would give their new album away "over my dead body". Noel kept up the fighting talk recently when he commented: "I didn't spend a year in the most expensive studio in England, with the most expensive producer in America, and the most expensive graphic designer in London, to then give it away. F--- that!"

In keeping with their retro-rocker character, Oasis are proudly Luddite, with Noel boasting that he doesn't know how to use a computer ("I'm immune from that filth"). Yet, whether the Mancunian bruisers like it or not, free downloads have become the prime marketing tool of the moment, with Coldplay and Keane recently giving away tracks that have subsequently gone on to become massive paid-for hits.

In the light of all this, the Oasis giveaway announced this week seems delightfully old school. In conjunction with the NME, Oasis will make available sheet music for three unreleased songs, Bag It Up, The Turning and (Get Off Your) High Horse Lady, to be featured on their forthcoming album, Dig Out Your Soul (due to be released in October). So it is free music, but the catch is you have to play it yourself.

This venture is supported by the Arts Council, not an organisation one would ordinarily associate with the fighting Gallagher brothers. The aim is to encourage young people to learn to read and play music. According to research by the Music Industry Association, more than 21 per cent of the UK population play an instrument (that's 11.5 million people, with 57 per cent being under 35 years old). Guitar sales have been booming, exceeding three quarters of a million a year and generating more than £100 million. And while the recorded-music industry suffers declining profits, sales of printed music have been slowly increasing, with a turnover of £32 million in 2006.

"The best sellers tend to be established rock bands with not too much electronics around them," says Richard King, chief executive of Faber Music, one of two dominant printed-music publishers in Britain. "It tends to be music you can relate to as a bass player or guitarist." Music Sales, which publishes Oasis's sheet music, claims What's the Story (Morning Glory) is the biggest-selling printed-music item since The Beatles Songbook.

Noel Gallagher has become increasingly involved in preparing Oasis's sheet music, encouraged by the number of young British musicians (such as Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys) who tell him they learnt to play with Oasis songbooks. "I'm just a strummer, that's what I do," says Noel. "Most of my songs start with open chords, usually D, G, A minor or E minor. Nothing of mine is too complicated, which is why my music connects to so many people, because it is so simple."

Next week's NME giveaway will include a link to a dedicated YouTube site, the aim being to encourage people to show off their own renditions (pre-cover versions, if you will).

The sheet music provides guitar chord diagrams and a top-line melody in staff notation. Without wishing to get too technical, Noel has retuned his sixth string (traditionally the bottom E) to D, resulting in some unusual chord shapes. And just when you are getting the hang of that, he will throw in a sequence of rapidly changing flats and fifths, one-note riffs and chord shifts where the melody line is as inscrutable as the lyrics. There are the usual references to "soul", "fire" and "sunshine", a sprinkling of "come ons" and entirely baffling lines about taking "a walk with the monkey man" and shaking "your rag doll, baby".

Business as usual, then. I have new-found respect for how Liam manages to bring so much conviction to lines such as: "Lay your love on the fire, when you come on in I got my hee bee gee bees in a hidden bag." I find it helps to sing this by putting your hands behind your back and tipping your head up towards an imaginary microphone, though it can make playing guitar a little awkward.

I have the unfair advantage of having heard the new Oasis album, although it hasn't helped much. Dig Out Your Soul is a heavier, more psychedelic affair than their earlier work, like Black Sabbath crossed with Revolver-era Beatles.

These songs might have their origins in Noel's acoustic strumming, but to get the full effect you would have to add at least 16 tracks of guitar overdubs, an orchestra, sitars, organs, ringing drums from Tomorrow Never Knows and one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time.

The modern music audience increasingly demands access and interactivity. By giving away sheet music instead of recordings, Oasis cleverly shift emphasis from the product to the actual music. Unleashing a wave of amateur versions might even increase awareness of what music is worth, by emphasising what the artists actually bring to the experience.

But there could be a downside to challenging your fans to get involved. Next time someone invades the stage at an Oasis gig, don't be surprised if he is carrying a guitar and just wants to play along.

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Click here to vote for us at the BT Music Awards