I give out a small unofficial award for some of my favorite original songs in English/instrumentals that are part of the Open Mic contest. How do I participate? * Make a valid entry to Open Mic. * Make sure the title makes it clear that the song is original and in English or an instrumental. * Be someone other than me. (Sorry Spanish musicians. You guys are great but I don't understand well enough to evaluate the songs.) Everyone I select gets these prizes: * A full upvote from me on their post. * 4 SBD transfer * One more full upvote if they comment on this post. Transfers will be delayed a little bit this week because I screwed up. I made a series of dumb mistakes on Binance and a bunch of my liquidity is locked up there when it should be here, so instead of 500+ SBD I have four. And because I was gone last weekend I don't have post payouts to make up for it. Transfers will come when Binance support catches up or when my posts from Tuesday pay out. Prizes come from the combined payout of this and my Open Mic entry, so if they get upvoted past the base prizes I do a second round when the posts pay out. @pfunk has been kindly voting them to make sure that happens. Please reward him with a witness vote if you aren't already. Three winners this week.

Winners in no particular order:

"Clouds" by @drewley
Before coming here I enjoyed a few instrumentals but was almost entirely focused on vocal music. I'm a words guy, after all. But as I do this contest I'm really pleased by how often I've been drawn to the instrumentals, but Drew and others. I really enjoy that I'm learning more about my own reactions to music here. Thank you.

"Look Around You" by @edenmichelle

"Some people breathe to live while others live to breathe." I think I would have enjoyed your grandfather. Thank you for sharing this little piece of him with us.

"Chapters Just Begun" by @darrenclaxton

OK, so I'm a sucker for literary songs. This one fits in very well with the attitude toward storytelling that the fiction writers have who I spend much of my time with in the non-Steem world. I will tell you stories to refine and integrate my past while driving me forward into the future. It's rare to see someone recognize in one art form the personal experience of people working in another. Well done.

Open Mic Support

I have a challenge for other people to do just what I'm doing here: create a nonprofit curation post featuring songs that you love from Open Mic and giving the post rewards to the performers. I'd really love it if we could get a whole bunch of these going. Basic details are in this post. I'm pledging a 100% upvote to help get your posts' growth started, and to make sure you get something out of it, I'll buy you a @steembasicincome share (worth 0.5 Steem) every week you participate. Feel free to take my format or create one of your own. Mention me in the post, or come to the SBI Discord where I have a channel just for this project, or hit me up on the Open Mic Discord or anywhere else you happen to see me. The tag for this project is #openmicsupport

Hey! Before you upvote this post!

**If you want to upvote because you liked the songs, go upvote *their* posts!** (If their posts have paid out, see if they've commented here and give them an upvote.) If you want to upvote this one *also* that's fine but please reward the songwriters first.