Hawaii’s latest bid to unseat Sweden as the world record holder for largest ukulele ensemble performance fell short tonight, but for many of the more than 1,200 four-string strummers who converged on the Neal Blaisdell Arena for the attempt, defeat was painless and, they insist, temporary.

“Oh, it was lots of fun,” said 90-year-old Rachel Lee, who came with more than a dozen of her friends from One Kalakaua Senior Livng to participate in the event. “I’d love to do it again.”

A fundraiser for the nonprofit Music for Life Foundation, the event brought together ukulele players of all backgrounds and ability levels in an attempt to set a new record for the largest number of people to simultaneously play a single composition for five minutes on the ukulele.

Sweden set the record in 2011 when 1,547 ukulele players gathered in Helsingborg to jam on “Leende Guldbruna Ogon,” a song made famous (in Sweden, assumably) by the band Vikingarna.

“That’s not right,” said Jewel Purdy. “The record has to come back home.”

An earlier attempt by the Music For Life Foundation to bring the record home to Hawaii drew just over 1,000 people.