Largest music lesson set world record in Chicago

[August 9] CHICAGO, US--nearly 1,400 guitar players from he Old Town School of Folk Music gathered in Welles Park on the Northwest Side to obliterate the world record for largest music lesson. 
“It only had to last 10 minutes to qualify”, said Jimmy Tomasello, the Old Town School’s guitar-program manager and one of the coordinators of the giant strum-in.

(click here to enlarge photo)

   But the lesson, led from the gazebo near the middle of the park by more than two dozen teachers from the school, lasted nearly an hour and offered a little something for intermediate players (instructions on suspended second chords and strum variations) as well as beginners (what number to give to each finger in chord diagrams).

   Previous record: a group harmonica lesson for 539 students staged in Switzerland last year.

    See Eric Zorn's report in Chicago Tribune