How to Write Chords like A. G. Cook

Part I: Life Sim, IDL, and the fundamentals of pop chord-writing.

As most of you know, I’m a huge fan of British music producer A. G. Cook. In a nutshell, this boils down to how good he is at juxtaposing experimental sound design with accessible chord and melody writing. A. G. Cook, in my opinion, has mastered diatonic songwriting, i.e., songs that don’t use a lot of chromatic notes.

To get into A. G. Cook’s brain a little, this newsletter looks at A. G. Cook’s chord writing. This article is primarily aimed at fans of PC Music and A. G. Cook who want to try their hands at writing a chord loop in his style. The article should also be of interest to music producers more generally who want to level up their chords.

To kick things off, let’s take a closer look at “IDL,” an iconic track by A. G. Cook, which he released under the alias of Life Sim. Here is what it sounds like:

And here is my re-creation, which I created by reverse-engineering the original MIDI, abstracting a handful of rules from it, and applying them to a fresh project:

What you’ll find after reading this article is that A. G. Cook is quite methodical about how he builds chords, and his MIDI lends itself well to reverse-engineering, so you can create similar-sounding (dare I say: gorgeous) chord loops of your own in your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).

A. G. Cook, MIDI and Chord-Writing

Before we get started, I’ll just point to a few interviews that show how fundamental MIDI and chord-writing is to A. G. Cook’s. Here’s a quote from 2013, for example:

Recently I’ve been starting tracks in a very raw way, getting chords and melodies down using very plain sounds, basically the most boring string, flute and piano sounds my computer has. This lets me focus on coming up with interesting material before I get lost in production or sound design. Most of the time I’m just clicking everything in one note at a time, though my brain’s really adapted to that way of thinking so it feels completely natural. TANK Magazine Interview 2013

In effect, A. G. is using the pencil tool to draw in one MIDI event after another, playing it back, making adjustments, etc. Elsewhere, A. G. referred to himself as a “MIDI chord and preset junkie,” by which he means that he devoted most of his energies towards writing chords and then layering them with different instruments:

We [SOPHIE and I] were opposites in many ways, and naturally complementary. At that time [around 2014] I was a total MIDI chord and preset junkie, obsessed with layering music and striving for an emotional impact, […].

Finally, in a Q & A titled “Extreme Vox Q&A,” he hosted as part of the release of his album Apple (see Apple Guild), he went into a bit of detail about his own experience with music theory and chord-writing:

I think I really just gained the most from working on a computer and writing a lot of chords in MIDI and actually thinking about it; and then listening to other music and seeing how that related, […].

All of this is to say that A. G. Cook has, over the years, gained a wealth of experience, writing and re-writing chords in the piano roll, and taking inspiration from other pop songwriters.

How to Write Chords like Life Sim

Let’s take a closer look at one his most beginner-friendly, yet iconic chord loops: IDL, which A. G. Cook released under the alias of Life Sim.

If you haven’t heard this track before, I highly recommend checking it out here:

Side note: This was the first PC Music track I ever heard… maybe back in 2018, or so? Suffice it to say, it had an enormous impact on me.

The MIDI for this track can be found on the 7G Deluxe Files. That folder also contains .mid files for “Shy,” “Paradise,” “Lil Song,” and some others.

‘Nuff said, let’s delve in.

IDL chords.mid

IDL chords.mid, transposed from E♭ major to C major for legibility.

What you’re hearing are the chords above, on a pad preset titled “PD Munich” on Reveal Sound’s Spire soft synth. I’ve also transposed the chord loop (and all examples below) to C major for easier legibility.

There are a couple of takeaways from studying IDL chords.mid:

• Every chord consists of exactly three notes.

• The note C is present in every chord. In the key of C major, C corresponds to Scale Degree 1, which is held over from one chord to the next.

• The remaining two notes of every chord consist of rising parallel thirds: D + F; E + G; F + A; and G + B.

The chord loop repeats four times. The first two times, the C is on top. The third time, the C is in the middle and the 3rd is on top. The fourth time, the C is on top again. The quality of the chords doesn’t change; it’s just A. G. bumping up the notes (transposing) in pitch to add extra energy to the loop.

IDL main loop.mid

Ok, let’s look at the main chords now. What appears to have happened is that A. G. Cook arpeggiated the chords, i.e. broken them up.

All I’ve done here is to take “IDL chords.mid” and applied an Arpeggiator (MIDI FX) plug-in and selecting 1/8 as the arpeggiation rate.

The sound I’m using here is the pluck preset PL Sonic on the soft synth Spire.

Can you hear already how the chord loop is becoming IDL-like?

For the last step, we need to modify some notes here and there, to make the pattern a little more unique and less predictable.

For bar 1, we push the second C up to a D; bar 2 is left as is; bar 3 we bump the first C up to a D; and in bar 4 we replace the first C with a G and the last B with an E. And BAM ! We have the IDL pattern (:

IDL main loop.mid, as found in the 7G Deluxe Files, transposed to C major

Sound familiar? (:

IDL bass.mid

To add some extra oomph on the low end, we’ll need to add some bass. All we need to do is to simply copy/paste the bassline from the arpeggiated pattern (“IDL main loop.mid.”), and transpose the notes down by an octave. Pretty simple!

IDL bass.mid; Preset: BA Big Sound 04 on Spire

IDL melody pick.mid

Ok next, let’s look at the other end of the frequency spectrum. The melody pluck can also be derived from the file “IDL main loop.mid” to place little accents ontop of the pattern.

You can see the accents below, I’ve coloured the doubled notes of IDL melody pick.mid in dark orange:

IDL melody pick.mid; Preset: Spire’s PL Pike 02 DP.

IDL xtra melody

Ok, finally to round things off, let’s look at the file titled “IDL xtra melody.mid.” This is actually the only MIDI file that contains new material, compared to the other ones, which have all been derived in some way from the original chords.

IDL xtra melody.mid, Preset: Spire’s PL Noise Saw

The things to say about this melody is that most of it hangs out on Scale Degree 5 (G), before moving down to C, then jumping back up to G. The rhythm is syncopated (the notes almost never fall on beat 1, but rather on the offbeats), which creates a nice bit of tension with the more even underlying arpeggiated pattern.

Re-composing IDL

Ok let’s try to create our own IDL pattern–we can use the above steps as a kind of recipe to follow.

Step 1: Write out Chords

First I tried to create a similar pattern that combines stepwise movement of chords together with a Scale Degree 1 that holds over from one chord to the next.

To mix things up a bit I made a descending rather than an ascending pattern & also changed the chords to IV - iii - ii - I.

Step 2: Arpeggiate the Chords

Next, we need to break them up into a 1/8 ascending pattern. I’ve done this manually, but you can do it with an arpeggiator too.

Step 3: Modify Some of the Notes

Step 4: Copy out the Bass

Simple as said above. Copy the bass notes to another software instrument, and transpose the MIDI down an octave.

Step 5: Copy out the Melody & Delete Notes

Next, I copied out the top part of the arpeggio pattern, bumped the notes up an octave, then removed individual notes, to recreate the same pattern as in IDL:

Step 6: Add an Xtra Melody

Finally I simply copied the Xtra melody, which works perfectly fine with my copy of IDL:

That’s it! Did you find this guide helpful? Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions re the method above, and feel free to share this with any friends who you think want to level up their chord-writing.