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(C)Sail in’ a way on the crest of a wave, it’s like (Am)mag ic.
Oh, (Ab)roll in’ and rid in’ and slip pin’ and slid in’, it’s (Fm)mag ic.
And (Em)you
and your sweet de sire,
You took (Em)me,
oh,
high er and high er, ba by.
It’s a liv in’ thing!
It’s a ter ri ble (G)thing to (C)lose.
It’s a giv en thing,
what a ter ri ble (G)thing to (C)lose.
(C)Mak in’ be lieve this is what you con ceived from your (Am)worst
day.
Oh, (Ab)mov ing in line, then you look back in time to the (Fm)first
day.
And (Em)you
and your sweet de sire,
You took (Em)me,
oh,
high er and high er, ba by.
It’s a liv in’ thing!
It’s a ter ri ble (G)thing to (C)lose.
It’s a giv en thing,
what a ter ri ble (G)thing to (C)lose.
(C)lose.
It’s a liv in’ thing!
It’s a ter ri ble (G)thing to (C)lose.
It’s a giv en thing!
What a ter ri ble (G)thing to (C)lose.
It’s a liv
This page shows “Livin' Thing” by Electric Light Orchestra in our color-coded kid songbook view — every note is colored by pitch (red C, orange D, yellow E, green F, blue G, purple A, pink B) and the lyrics sit directly under each note, so children can sing along while they play. The song is in the key of C at 100 BPM, a medium-difficulty arrangement — try slowing the tempo down using the BPM control.
This arrangement is a great workout for handling chromatic chords outside the home key — you've got thirteen chords here, and several like Ab, Bbm, Fm, and Gaug will pull your hands into unfamiliar shapes amid otherwise comfortable C-major territory. Your left hand drives an oompah bass pattern throughout, so start by drilling that alone at around 70 BPM until it feels automatic, because you'll need all your mental bandwidth for the right-hand chord changes. Watch the transitions into and out of those flat-side chords especially — the move from G or Gaug into Ab tends to trip people up, so loop those two-bar passages until the fingering is memorized, not guessed. Once both hands are solid separately, bring them together still under tempo and only speed up in small increments. By the end, you'll be genuinely comfortable navigating chromatic harmony, and that's a skill that pays off in dozens of other songs.