Have you ever wanted to make your way into the record books for a music-related achievement? Well, 457 Aussie musicians have done just that today, after breaking the record for the largest electric guitar ensemble.
Back in June, we reported on how the Sydney Guitar Festival was looking for as many like-minded musicians as possible to come together and help break a pretty cool world record.
Organisers of the festival hoped to have 500 guitar players turning out to simultaneously take part in playing AC/DC’s ‘Highway To Hell’ in order to attempt to break the previous record of 368 people, set in India back in 2013.
Now, as The Newcastle Herald reports, Sunday afternoon saw an army of music fans turn out in droves to help strum their way into the record books.
Helped along by Aussie rock legends The Choirboys, 457 people descended upon The Concourse in Chatswood to break the record, performing AC/DC’s 1979 classic as part of a record-breaking ensemble.
Powered by small, Marshall MS2 battery powered amplifiers, organisers said that despite the comparatively small amount of power behind them, participants more than made up for it in terms of passion and talent.
“They were tiny amps but they got the sound happening,” festival spokeswoman Tatiana Marchant explained to the Australian Associated Press. “It was such a great atmosphere. I’ve never been around so many men and guitars in all my life.”
While the vast majority of participants were indeed male, Tatiana Marchant did note that a large proportion of females and children also took part in the world record attempt.
The next step in the record-breaking process is for officials to verify the attempt – an undertaking could take up to six weeks. However, considering that they managed to outshine the previous record attempt by close to 200 people, there’s a good chance almost 500 happy musicians will be waking up tomorrow morning with some extra bragging rights.
Incidentally, news of this world record happens to come just weeks after Australian musician Scott Burford completed his world record attempt of the world’s longest guitar marathon. After playing guitar for 125 hours (that’s just under a week, if you were wondering), Burford managed to bypass the previous record holder by ten hours.
No matter how you look at it, it’s been a pretty interesting month for Australians and their music-related world record attempts.
Check out footage of the world record attempt here:
