In my time at the NME we cover-mounted loads of different freebies, including some now very collectable 7” singles, and a pack of playing cards featuring images of some of the readers favourite artists. I even managed to get David Bowie to sign his card one year at the Glastonbury Festival (a story for another day, dear readers)!

But one thing we never got around to was giving away sheet music. However, the Arts Council Of England have decided to use some of the taxpayers’ money to give away free sheet music with this week’s copy of the magazine (Sept 17). Now if we haven’t got enough budding musicians and artists in the UK already, thanks to the likes of X Factor, the Arts Council has decided to encourage the Guitar Hero generation to pick up a real instrument and learn how to play it. Oh lordy.

And just to make sure it’s nothing too complicated for the land’s budding guitarists they have teamed up with Oasis to give away the sheet music to three tracks from the Gallagher’s new album ‘Dig Out Your Soul’. And not content with keeping those budding musicians in their bedroom’s till they have mastered their licks, the readers are being encouraged to film themselves playing one of the songs and to upload it onto Oasis’ website. I can’t wait to watch the results, although I’m not sure if I’ll be tempted to get my guitar out of the loft!

I wonder if any of these hopefuls will be used in the band’s latest marketing campaign for their new album, as this week the band’s record company employed 50 buskers to play tracks from the new record around the parks and public spaces of Manhattan, including Grand Central Station and Times Square. And with Noel bedridden after being assaulted by a so called fan at the V festival in Toronto the other week it looks like he could be looking to recruit a stand in for himself to play the rest of the dates on their current US tour. He’ll certainly have a ready supply of standbys on tap!