How long till you could play on expert? (gh2)

OK well i just started playing guitar hero 2 tonight, maybe about 5 hours spend on it and i can pretty much 75% or higher every song on medium. Im going to run through some of the trickier songs a few times then try out hard.  how long were you playing before you got to expert? Or long long did you play and what was the highest difficulty you could master?

The first time I played on easy for a couple songs. Then I played medium for a couple hours. Soon that wasn't enough of a challenge and I moved to hard. And that's when things got ugly. I cannot play on hard mode and do well through an entire song (well honestly, I pretty much just played Laid to Rest for about 3 hours). Doesn't make sense, because I play guitar, and I can learn how to play a song before it's over (press play, read tab, and know it by the end of the song).

But I don't own any GH games, so I can only practise when I'm around friends that have it. I've probably put 10 hours max into the game. 

It didn't take me long on GH2, but that's because I played the first one first. On the first game, I basically just went through all the difficulties in order. Started with Easy, then on to Medium, and so on. Got stuck on a few songs and just kept trying until I could beat them. I did practice on Hard quite a bit before I moved on to Expert, but I have no idea how long it was.

They do a pretty good job of making the difficulty increase gradual in both games, though. I think the last few songs on Hard are harder than the first few songs on Expert, honestly.