YCONN

YCONN (a.k.a James Grover) has been focussed on writing toplines for the dance/pop market for 2+ years, writing with many singers/co-writers...either in-person or over zoom. With 30+ cuts in this time, across most of the reputable dance labels, his releases have hit well over 15 million streams so far.

He has written with/for: PS1 (Columbia/Sony), PBH & Jack (Defected, Heldeep), Far Out (Ophelia), Dualities (Loudkult), Hannah Boleyn (Ultra), Cally Rhodes (Perfect Havoc), Henry Dell (Loudkult, ChillYourMind), SONDR (Ultra), Ninski (Soave, Before Eight), Keepin It Heale (Selected, Soave), Movada (Spinnin', TYM/Warner) and many more.

Also has songs on hold with Lumix!, Sub Focus, Quintino, YVES V, John Gibbons, Danny Avila, and more. Has placed library tracks with EMI, Sony/ATV, BMG, and Peer Music and has had songs synced on MTV, BBC, Channel 4, ITV and many international TV shows.

Toplines available for established DJs. Required minimum label advance of at least £1000, or equivalent as a non-recoupable "vocalist + vocal producer fee".

Since 2016, James Grover has been based in London and focussed on creating original songs with real hit potential. In 2018 he created the YCONN name and began to focus on producing dance-pop for his own artist project and for other upcoming artists/collaborators.

His full productions have been signed to labels such as EMI, BMG and Loudkult, played at primetime on the BBC's flagship radio station, synced on TV shows around the world, and used by companies such as Amazon & Google.

In 2019 he completed a Masters Degree ("distinction" grade) in Commercial Music Production from Tileyard Education / University of Wales TSD. While at Tileyard (home to Joel Corry, Goodboys, MNEK, Sigala, The Prodigy, Sub Focus, Ella Eyre etc), he made the contacts that would allow him to find ever-growing success within the dance and pop sections of the music business.

Full Productions from £500-1000 for beat only, or £2000 inc mix + vocal prod + rewriting as necessary on the topline.

Known as the best vocal producer around by most singers that he's worked with, YCONN / James Grover's most notable credit as a vocal producer is for editing all 150 tracks of Little Mix's vocals on their hit song 'Heartbreak Anthem' with David Guetta & Galantis (and James actually also performed all the gang vocals on the track, by overdubbing many additional layers of his voice too). This song was written and co-produced at Tileyard London by SONDR (YK Koi & Lorenzo Cosi), for whom James has been the go-to vocal producer for around 3 years. And many more big songs with major artists are similarly in the works.

As Co-Founder and Head of Voice Production for vocal synthesis company Emvoice (emvoiceapp.com), when combined with his industry experience of working on vocals for global hit songs... James is quite possibly the world's leading authority on vocal editing.

In fact, the development process for the Emvoice software required 3+ years deep editing (down to the individual phoneme level) across hundreds of hours of vocal recordings, and hence James is capable of understanding lyrics just by looking at the audio waveforms.

Furthermore, he has developed many proprietary techniques for editing vocals that allow even average singers to sound world-class once vocal production has been completed.

Vocal Production rate is currently £1500 (major) / £500 (indie). Post-Production-Only rate is 50% of that (inc. editing + vocal mix).

YCONN / James Grover was trained directly by the world's #2 most successful mix engineer, Manny Marroquin (who mixes for The Weeknd, Imagine Dragons, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Charlie Puth, Selena Gomez and many many more). This exclusive "Mix With The Masters" training event was conducted in-person for a whole week in a world class studio in 2019.

Since this training, James now uses the exact same mixing methodology and hence is capable of delivering world class mixes. Indeed he is currently looking to take on more work of this type, with the ability to match the quality of more-highly-credited engineers at a lower price point.

Also, since 2019 he has completed hundreds of vocal mixes for dance tracks / DJs, and is becoming a respected authority on vocal mixing techniques, recently being approached to teach his own masterclass to degree level production students for ThinkspaceEducation.com

Additionally James is a widely respected mastering engineer among the band scene of North England (where he previously served as in-house engineer at Peak Studios, Bradford UK). He has mastered records for platinum selling band Embrace, and for recently successful bands including Marsicans, Allusinlove, Talkboy, and many more, and is the go-to mastering engineer for indie labels such as ComePlayWithMe and Clue Records.

Previously, he founded a company called ProTracks Production Ltd, which was for a time the world's leading producer of karaoke versions and ringtones, employing up to 10 full-time producers. During this time, James would complete the final mix and master for each track before sending to the clients... it was this experience of mixing literally 5000+ pieces of music that really refined his ear to the point where he began professionally mastering for bands, artists and other professional producers.

Mix rate is £750/song or £100/hour (demo mixes available as hourly).

Mastering is £50 per song, with discounts for over 5 songs.

James Grover (a.k.a YCONN) runs his own boutique artist/writer development company, Signal Records / MGMT, which is currently developing artists such as Henry Dell, Ally Thorn and Lauren St James. The company is co-managed by friend Marcus Jonsson who handles marketing/branding, legal matters, and business outreach/pitching, managing a small team of dedicated song pluggers who together have thousands of contacts across the industry. This leaves James to handle all A&R duties ie anything directly involving musical quality/vision/direction.

The idea of the company is simple yet ambitious... to find raw talent and to build that into an artist/writer capable of creating global hits. For talent submissions, please visit signalrecords.co.uk. Send a small selection of your best work, and if it shows real promise, we'll be in touch.

If you need a guaranteed response with detailed feedback, A&R consulting rates are £100/hour (zoom or in-person...London only).

Additionally, James is a part-time A&R for two independent publishers:

Unified-Songs.com — Dance publisher, representing writers like Bright Sparks, Bertie Scott, Tribbs, and with cuts like Tiesto, Oliver Heldens, Laidback Luke and many many more.

JAMmusicPublishing.com — New music library founded by sync industry veteran Jay Mistry (JMConsultancy.biz, ex BMG, Jinglepunks). JAM represents over 5000 tracks in the UK market from very well-known US libraries like Burnett and PostHaste, and is developing its own artist label, signing an eclectic and exciting mix of new and old artists and albums across the whole spectrum of music.

This complementary set of experiences makes Signal Records a company to watch out for in the near future.

James Grover (a.k.a YCONN) is Co-Founder and Head of Voice Production for vocal synthesis company Emvoice (emvoiceapp.com), which is the world's most realistic 'robot singer'. Emvoice also has created the world's best sounding lead vocoder voice "Thomas", as heard on singles by globally renowned DJs such as Don Diablo and Galantis.

Additionally James is working on the following ideas to be launched eventually under the Signal Records umbrella:

— An A&R tool / submissions and music file management platform to take over from Submit Hub, Disco, Soundcloud, and Dropbox

— An innovative chord-player software (and eventually hardware)

— A game-changing artist management app

— Various innovative audio processing plugins with must-have time-saving functionality

— A.I. song generation capable of actual "hit" level results

If you are a skilled coder or other like-minded entrepreneur who is interested in building music tech software, please get in touch. Desperately looking for a CTO to get some of these ideas into action.