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Previous winners include Birdy!

The UK's largest music talent competition for singers and songwriters travelled to Manchester this week to see the best acts in the area battle it out for a chance to play at the grand final at the O2 in January.

Here the judges give us some feedback from the event, but remember it could all change at the grand final. Those who didn’t make it through on the day there is one more opportunity to make the O2 with the Wildcard vote; www.openmicuk.co.uk/national_vote

Views expressed by Judges are opinions and subjective to that particular Judge panel and in no way reflect the views of Open mic UK but are published with a view to be positive and beneficial to the performing act’s so they may take on board with a view to helping  them.

Judges Singer songwriter Greg Morton, Heather Baker from Singing Teacher Biz, Bold Management’s Managing Director Martin O’Shea, professional singer Karen Corson and Future Music’s Chris Grayston.

Under 18’s

Amy Brooks; Brilliant effort and showed lots of character pulling it round after losing her thread. Try to work on creating some softer moments. Loud isn’t always good! Get more rehearsed and going to have a bright future.

Hayley Collins; Very accomplished on keys. Original could have flowed better with a stronger hook. Need to develop the lower range so don’t lose quality and power down there.

Taylor Cousins; Needed more performance as a bit wooden so look to work on that as have a lovely voice. Watch guitar tuning, last minute tuning is always wise.

Sophie Bond; Looked like she enjoyed the performance with appropriate moves. Perhaps the image could be more country?

Katy Hamilton; Needs to watch tuning to control the voice better which was slightly off key through most of the performance.

Emily Middlemas; Very confident and good performance be careful not to over use some moves, perhaps a little too staged. Try to not get carried away with the performance and end up shouting down the mic for audience participation.

Vincent McKee; Good use of the stage and of vocal control. Nice vibrato but an odd song choice a better pick would have been a higher song and work on that top range.

Ramena; Good choice of cover and in the main tuning was spot on albeit off pitch on the lower notes due to lack of cord closure which is easily fixed.  Hard song to do live after all Katie Perry couldn’t do it live so did better than her.

 Jade Burke; Worked the stage well but suffered with tuning which was hard to see past. Need to get pitch perfect and develop some tone as the vocal was shouted in places.

Katie Benbow; Good original just need to poke a hook through a little stronger. Cover is the best adaption of a cover in the under 18’s competition. Just need to learn to control the louder notes so they have even more quality.

Jenna Milroy; Performance could be more punchier and snappy. Don’t over focus on the high notes,  look to develop the chest voice so the lower notes have more quality and work the dynamics.

Distracted; Nice voices, great harmonies and original song, keep polishing to perfect act which with  more performance and working on expression will come.

Maia Van Spall; Lovely voice just pay particular attention to tuning towards the end parts of the song keep focused as maybe more concentration required.

Kirsty Murphy; Nice tone but top notes are going flat as your pushing too hard on them. Try to develop more depth to your voice to prevent that happening so much. Again dynamics could give the vital points on the song greater impact but a very good performance.

Chelsie Tyrrell; Wonderful performance, lovely tone, great dynamics and made the cover her own, spot on! This act nailed it totally.

Eilidh McCole; Dynamics could have been slightly better. Song choice was far too big, embrace the softer parts of your voice as they are far more commercial.

Dion McGrath; Nice voice but is it an impression? Performance needed more conviction and missed all the high notes. Maybe try to push yourself with more challenging songs.

BeLa; Looked great! But there was an emphasis in the performance on the high notes. Learn to sing in a mix rather than pushing that chest voice too high then you won’t go flat or yell, alternatively flip into falsetto for big end notes. Cover choice was a little dated.

Em Jay Jo; Good image. Picked a hard song but did it justice good job with some nice dynamics!

Hatty Keane; What an improvement from the regional finals, looks great and backed it up with a powerful performance, watch don’t over push the vocal so that it could potential cause damage.

Molly Griffith’s; A lot of ballads being chosen but one of the better performances. Work on the break in your voice then you’ll have more options to stylise your songs, falsetto is very difficult to control.