Digital graphic design with a blue background and a silver badge on the left side that reads 'Best of Tennessee 2025'. Bold text in the center says 'Voted Best of Tennessee 2025!' with a website link 'GuideToTennessee.com' below.
Dave Isaacs seated holding an acoustic guitar. Photo by Deone Jahnke.
A woman with blonde curly hair smiling while playing an acoustic guitar indoors.

If you’re ready to stop wrestling with your guitar and start playing music, you’ve come to the right place.

Welcome to NashvilleGuitarGuru.com.

I’m Dave Isaacs, and I help guitarists get unstuck.

Is your practice time:

  • unfocused

  • unproductive

  • uninspiring?

Do you have stubborn challenges you can’t seem to resolve?

Maybe you just want to feel more confidence when you play.
I teach my students how to learn: how to approach new music, and how to solve old problems.

If you want to change your playing and finally make friends with your guitar, I can help.

“Some guitarists are gifted players and a few guitarists are gifted teachers, but it’s rare to find someone who has full command of both disciplines. Dave Isaacs is one such musician.”
— Andy Ellis, former Senior Editor, Guitar Player Magazine
A man sitting on a chair holding a red electric guitar, smiling. A woman with curly hair, wearing a white and purple top, is holding a video game controller, smiling. They are against a purple background.
A group of people sitting in a circle playing acoustic guitars inside a dimly lit room with purple lighting, a large artwork of an elderly man's face on the wall, and large windows in the background.
Two men playing guitars in front of a wall decorated with colorful vinyl records, with an amplifier and music equipment visible.

New from NGG Publications:

24 graded exercises for 3-string guitar!
Now available as a physical book or PDF download


There are several ways you can work with Dave:

1. Private lessons, online or in person

2. On-demand video courses at TrueFire.com
27 courses, from first beginner steps to advanced musical concepts

3. ArtistWorks virtual classroom
An innovative hybrid approach combining video lessons with direct online interaction

4. Subscribe to the premium content site.
- Access an extensive library of transcriptions, exercises, and song lessons
- Monthly Live Zoom
- Guitar Mechanic video evaluation
- Scholarship rate for private lessons.


Upcoming events

A person playing an acoustic guitar, with text overlay advertising a pop-up workshop titled 'Angel From Montgomery' (Bonnie Raitt arrangement), live on Zoom on Saturday, May 2nd at 10 AM CDST.

“Dave Isaacs is an outstanding teacher because he is part fan, part musician, part songwriter, part psychologist and part motivator.

Bart Herbison, Executive Director
Nashville Songwriters Association International

“Other guitar teachers I’ve had teach you to play songs. Dave teaches you to play guitar.”
Allie Beers, pre-med student, Vanderbilt University

Book cover for "The Perpetual Beginner: A Musician's Path to Lifelong Learning" by Dave Isaacs, featuring a stylized blue guitar neck on a yellow background with abstract musical elements.

The Perpetual Beginner

A musician’s path to lifelong learning

By Dave Isaacs


"A delightful blend of memoir
and music instruction"

- Publisher's Weekly

The Perpetual Beginner is part memoir, part musical instruction manual. Relating stories of his experiences as a young musician and music student in 1980's New York, author Dave Isaacs describes the key lessons that shaped his musical life and how they can help any aspiring musician at any age.

The title refers to the average music hobbyist with more enthusiasm than skill or time to practice. Many people play for years without developing more than rudimentary abilities, and some become so frustrated by the struggle that they stagnate or quit. The stories in the book and the musical lessons they impart give these "perpetual beginners" the ideas, techniques, and encouragement that will help them begin to progress again.

The title also references the Zen concept of "beginner's mind", a way of approaching any endeavor with the openness and zeal of a beginner regardless of experience. Maintaining a beginner's mindset removes many of the self-limiting beliefs and inhibitions that hold many people back, thus enabling the learning process - hence the book's subtitle, "A musician's path to lifelong learning."

Author Dave Isaacs is a musician, performing songwriter, and teacher based in Nashville, where he is known as the "Guitar Guru of Music Row".

Follow Nashville Guitar Guru on YouTube!