I don't know if it was from a mod, but when I played with a friend there was a modifier to disable failing out of songs, so we'd enable it on those songs and just swing along wildly as best we could, and still finish them. Also helped us get a lot better at the game. Maybe that would work?
Yeah, that's probably what I'm going to do when there's no lower difficulty maps made for them, but the 'missed block' clown honks you get are still pretty demoralizing.
Yeah it makes sense, modding games has a barrier to entry which filters out people who aren't enthusiasts, enthusiasts tend to be better at the game (ie more likely to make an install difficulty mods)