D tuning is increasingly becoming associated with James Hill. He has put together a new book called Great Popular Songs: 20 Timeless Tunes Compiled and Arranged for Ukulele.
The first thing you should know is that these popular songs are the usual suspects. They are good, basic songs with the sort of intervals that give you a basis for playing everything else. You will not find any Lady Gaga here. You can see why if you go to this video that teaches you how to play the latest Lady Gaga song Judas. Two things will become obvious to you if you watch it is that the song. First, like almost all current pop, consists of the same simple patterns repeated over and over again. It's easy to learn. But you will also notice that our teacher in the video is very careful to never actually sing the words of the song or hum more than little snatches of melody. That's because she doesn't want to get sued.
The simple songs in learning books are no different really. They just happen to be public domain so no one gets sued. And they actually are great tunes. If you listen to them carefully as you sing and play them, you'll notice that these melodies tend to turn up in newer popular songs quite often.
Okay, digression over, back to James Hill's book. The big thing for D tuning learners is that it's all set up for us (just make sure you order the D6 tuning edition). It's got all the chord shapes you need. You can play the melody too and example they have on-line can be played entirely with re-entrant (high 4th) tuning. That's good. They should be pretty easy to sing and play and memorize if that is what you want to do.
James Hill explains his reasons for picking these songs here and here.
Verdict: I if were just starting, I would have ordered this immediately. I'm less than fond of the heavy dose of partisan politics some of the "folk" music in these collections inevitably includes but I could live with that.
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