Maroon 5 - This Love | Song Tutorial

Maroon 5's This Love was the hit that first brought them fame. It's also their best song to date.


Hi Guys!

I remember when I first heard Maroon 5's first mega hit song "This Love." I was working at an ice cream parlor, saving up for what would be an awesome next year filled with travel. As doesn't happen to me with too many tunes, I instantly digged this song and really felt this band was going places. That was back then.

Now - although I must be honest, I feel their music hasn't exactly stood the test of glory and fame, having turned into easy-catchy and away from the organic songwriter-style they once had - Maroon 5 has managed to become one of the biggest bands out there.

Killer (Piano) Riff

"This Love" starts right off with its signature and coolest part: the piano-riff hook. Cleverly opening upon a less stable slash chord (G/B), after which the killer (bass) riff takes you over the I and the IV (Cm and Fm respectively) to a juicy and even less stable diminished chord (Ddim), urging to solve back to its I (G) but then really doing that, since we're going back to the third-in-the-bass slash version of that chord - which is hardly as home-ish. Good luck it isn't. It just kindly takes us back to riff that wants to move on again (perhaps to G's I? smooth).

This riff/hook is strong enough to carry the entire verse as well, which is obviously a nice bonus if you want to learn to play this song. One riff - Intro & Verse down!

A Kinder Chorus

The chorus then is a little... "kinder" if you will, when the key changes to C minor, in stead of the more exotic C harmonic minor caused by the "b" from that G/B -major- and Ddim -which can also be played as a Ddim7- going from the I (Cm) to the IV (Fm) to the VII (Bb) and the III (Eb) - or if we'd translate that to major, relative Eb: VI, II, VI, I - standard, instant hit progression.

Turn to the bridge (premium only) to find some nice soulful juicing up of those chords that we've seen before and you're all set to play the awesome piano part of "This Love."

In this tutorial I'll show you:

  • That cool Piano-Riff Intro - which is also the piano part for the verse
  • Clever use of a slash chord and a dim chord, making this hook so juicy
  • The chorus

Have fun learning how to play "This Love" on piano!

Cheers, Coen.

Maroon 5 | This Love

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Includes the bridge, full chord sheet, MIDIs and audio-only file

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About Coen

Founder of Piano Couture and creator of the Hack the Piano method. Coen is a musician, reader, writer, web-designer, eater and traveler. Find him at CoenModder.com

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