GH3 is brutal on hard. It's not challenging, it's just mean. Practice, note memorization and saving star power for the "wall of notes" are the only recommendations I have. I'm stuck on Muse and Queens of the Stone Age on hard.

I found GH3 on hard to be much harder than GH1 or GH2. What I did when I was ready to make the transition to hard was to go back and play through most of GH1 and then GH2 on hard, and then I found I was ready for #3 for the most part. Doing that made the progression feel more natural instead of the ridiculous difficulty leap that is the medium->hard change in the third game. There were some songs in the final set of each game I struggled with a bit, so in each case I would just make the move to the next game rather than kill myself playing the same songs over and over again. I found I was then able to go back later and beat them fairly easily.

It's all about practice really, I'm about half way through GH3 on expert now (I didn't follow my own advice and made the change from hard->expert without playing through the previous games on expert). I really enjoy the fact that I can go back and 5 star hard songs now that I used to really struggle with.

The only other advice I have is to play the songs you enjoy playing the most on hard in Quick Play, providing they aren't too far down the list. I always find I do better, and have more fun, playing the songs I really like, regardless of difficulty. And once you find yourself being more comfortable with that fifth button, the faster chord changes, etc. then you can make the leap into the hard career mode.

Have fun and good luck!

Edit: one more bit, regarding the "wall of notes". Practice mode does help with that, especially if it's 1 part of 1 song that you're struggling with. But, increasing your playing ability will also have you finding yourself being able to completely interpret and play what used to be just a wall of notes.

I dont think Guitar Hero (any of them) requires memorization. Its your muscles, reflexes, and hand-eye-coordination that factor in, not recalling note patterns. Memorization might help with absolutely perfecting a song, but just getting the skills down is the real trick

On Hard mode in all three titles, the main roadblocks are:
That Damn Orange Button
OMG its so fast!
OMG there's so many notes!

I got from Medium to Expert in GH2 from April to June and I think the key factor for breaking through Hard was abandoning Career mode.

Instead of playing the same tough song over and over (Woman) I went to Quickplay, and just started playing lots of songs on Hard. I found some that came later that were very doable, like John the Fisherman. It helped that there were some tough ones that I really enjoyed, so playing them repeatedly made me better and better at the game overall. I was less panicked by seeing more notes and I got accustomed to the speed of the difficulty level.

Dedicate a few hours of play time to just picking through the whole setlist on Hard. It'll help get your fingers and eyes on the same page as what's expected of Hard players. Getting into Expert and getting to where you can be extremely proficient at most songs requires a few other skills most starting players never develop, like alternate strumming (up-down on every part of virtually every song) and getting so accustomed to standard GH 'moves' that they'll recognize them on the fly, mainly in heavy HOPO sections (Hammeron-Pulloff). I think the main way I progressed from a mediocre Expert player to an Expert Expert player was one day where I just played the Guitar Battle vs Slash over and over in Quickplay. The song is so much fun to play and Slash's bluesy/hard rock style results in a lot of moves that carry over into every other part of the game. Mastering the song helped me master the game.

So after that GH2 Hard on Quickplay session, I went back into the career after a few days and made it all the way through Hard in a few sittings. And the difficulty jump from Hard to Expert is nowhere near as crazy. In fact it's a relief to finally playing ALL the notes in a song, and not just a representative (and sometimes confusing) selection of them.

Good luck

Edit: Oh the other thing that was key for me to get Hard down... I switched my fingers all one button towards the body of the guitar, so my pinky was always on Orange, and my first two fingers would move up to red and green depending on the situation. The main difference there is that everyone's first and middle fingers are so much more coordinated than their pinky. They have a much easier time moving quickly and accurately without a ton of training.

That song stumped me for at least a month. Walk away for a bit (days). Play other things and come back when you've got the GH itch. When I finally beat it, I just had that, "I want to play this damn song through" feeling. It wasn't that I was frustrated, it was just a confidence that i was going to do it this time. Once you get past the frustration, some of the songs you get hung up on can become much, much easier.

Guitar Hero is dead to me. I got Guitar Hero 3, and at first I really liked the crazy fast songs, as I tend to. Guitar solos that go up and down really fast have always been my favorite parts.

Played through on Hard first, since it had been a while since I played Guitar Hero 2. Then when through much of the game on Expert. Stopped at the final set, because I began to simply focus on Dragonforce on Expert. The beginning would always screw me up. 1%, 2%, 3%, finally 4%. Alright, awesome, getting better. Finally got past that first %4, and the rest of the song seemed like cake. Got to 83%, and suddenly my fingers went retarded and I failed. So I gave up for a little while.

I came back a week later and played a handful of other songs. Finally played One by Metallica on Expert, and I failed... at 99%! 99%!!! Then Rock Band came out and I never looked back. Even though the window for hitting notes is smaller in Rock Band (it played more like GH2 than 3) and the guitar that came with it has since stopped working for no good reason other than it sucks, it's just overall a more fun experience.

Not going to bother with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Don't see the point. The singer in GH3 already had a massively retardedly huge mouth to begin with.

Doubt I'll even bother with Guitar Hero 4. I think the entire series is dead to me unless they do something drastically new and interesting. But it's really hard to beat a big plastic drum set! And I just don't think Neversoft truly gets the whole music game thing the way Harmonix does.

Yeah, overall GH3 is harder than Rock Band on Expert, but I think Rock Band's expert songs scale up more in difficulty per tier, so that by the final tier they're nearly even.

Bots, I've always told friends to play Infected in the original Guitar Hero on Hard as many times as it takes to get the chord changes down. That seems to help at least get them used to the orange button. In 2, Woman is just brutal for someone just trying to break into the level. The earlier advice to try other songs on hard outside of career mode is spot on. There are plenty of songs further down the list that are much easier to play on hard than Woman.

I'm sticking with the Guitar Hero franchise for now, though I plan on adding Rock Band to my list this year.

I agree with your overall assessment of GH3 though. I really tired of Neversoft years ago. I was not happy they were given the Guitar Hero series to continue development. I get a profound sense of "screw you" from some of the songs. I'm really only enjoying GH3 so much because of the song list, but I do wish Harmonix had developed it instead. I'm looking forward to Aerosmith simply because I like their music.

However, aside from Boom Boom Rocket, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band, there aren't that many games that I can use with the controller, so there really is no point for me to give up on any series unless it just gets to the point of suck.

All that said, my plan is to get GH2 for the 360, simply because I liked the game that much on the PS2 and I want the DLC, and then move on to Rock Band and maybe pick up a drum set eventually. Hell, might get the microphone to as some point.

I'll admit, what drove me away from GHIII was that it didn't feel fun anymore. It felt like "work", while RB felt like pure, unadulterated joy.

Time is essentially all that it's going to take. Some natural aptitude helps as well, but give it time, and more important than anything else, just try to enjoy it. It took me a while to realize that playing games like these to get the top 100 score at some song sucks a lot of the fun out of it. At least for me.

At the harder difficulties they both feel like work, but I like the core songs in GH more than RB. In Rock Band I always have one more song in a set than I thought was left. I just don't like playing any of them for the most part. Some of the DLC appeals to me, but I'm an achievement junkie, so beating the various difficulties in the solo tour is what I need.

I've always disliked the ridiculous jump in difficulty from Medium to Hard on these games. There needs to be another difficulty in there between medium and hard. Songs go from nothing to do on medium to flailing madly at the guitar hoping to hit some notes on hard. There's no sense of progression and after failing the same song three or four times I generally just quit. I'm not going to go to practice mode and make the damn game into work. That's just not fun.

If I have to force myself to practice and get better at it to progress then it stops being a game and starts being something else. At that point I might as well stop playing the game and actually do something else.

Do you strum up and down or only in one direction?

(Edit: Not intended as a come-on line. )

Quintin_Stone, making sure the Goodjer Homoeroticism trend continues.

For some reason I can't get strumming down in both directions. Although I've gotten used to it. The arm that feels like its going to fall off is my left arm trying to hit all the fret buttons. It's only when I have to alternate notes at a speed comparable to a monkey on crack that my arm gets sore.

My impression of Harmonix going from Medium to Hard was more like "We're glad you've got down the basics, now let's see if you can play the song with all the notes!"

My impression of Neversoft has been more like "We like to punish our customers because we think its funny people will continue to play this no matter how impossible we make it." I think that people learning Through the Fire and Flames on Expert at launch is probably sending Neversoft the message the game was not hard enough.

Seriously, I felt like Harmonix was about just rocking out and having fun. Neversoft makes it feel like work. There is a definite change in the gameplay mechanic. I think I continue to enjoy GH3 because it does retain the core gameplay and the songlist is really strong, but the spirit of the game has definitely changed. I think GH2 continues to rate as the best, and I look forward to moving onto Rock Band if only because on comparison I really see now what Harmonix brought to the table.

However, aside from Boom Boom Rocket, Guitar Hero II & III, and Rock Band, there are not a whole lot of uses for the Guitar peripheral on the 360.

I do what I can.

In my opinion, getting the two-direction strum solid is an important part of moving to the harder levels. It does require a bit of retraining.

What if you strum both ways? I alt-strum it during the fast parts and down-strum it when the chart is more spaced out.

I have been trying to convert to double strum vs single strum (or slap bass style) It's a hard, hard thing to do. But on the hard level when you get to knights there is simple no other way of going fast enough to hit all the notes. I still find my self swapping back into single strum on some songs as it just seemseasier than double.

I have converted some 3 star songs into 4 but I have yet to hit another 5 star on hard. I wish Rock Band would come out on PC... Windows live people hello? But I guess a plastic drum set next to my computer would look pretty retarded.