Ok, so I bought the Groove Monkee Funk Hip Hop R&B MIDI Drum Loops.
I thought I might as well let you hear the first results
soundcloud.com/dick-pronk/body-and-soul-1
and
soundcloud.com/dick-pronk/titanium

 
I very much enjoyed your singing on both Body and Soul and Titanium.
 
After listening... I think you should program your own drum patterns.
 
My guess is that 20 minutes of work will reveal the possibility that you can lay out better sounding, and more appropriate drums in under 5 minutes.
 
You might as well make the most of your natural sounding and easy to enjoy voice.
 
I hope this seems constructive. :-)
 
all the best,
mike

Hi Mike,
 
Thank you very much for listening. I tried creating my own patterns, but believe me... I'm not very good at it.
What I'm trying to achieve is a crossover between jazz and hip hop, that's why I used the Groove Monkee loops.
How would you change it?
 
I've also done a song with jazz brushes, soundcloud.com/dick-pronk/deep-water , but it's not exactly what I want.

I guess if I was in your shoes, I would program the simplest beat you can get away with until you get quicker at it.
 
Take a careful look at the Groove Monkee patterns that seem to gel with your material and start to recognize the basic patterns that appeal to you.
 
Just sort of get comfortable with the basic kick and snare patterns and ignore the rest until it just opens up and makes good sense. At some point you figure out you are only interested in half a dozen or so basic patterns and then the placement of accents will start to make sense and you'll begin to know when and where to use them.
 
I think this is what people hope for when they start delving into libraries of patterns.. they hope that they will get good at finding good patterns.
 
I sincerely think it can be a quicker to just spend a couple weeks figuring out what basic patterns you enjoy working with the goal quickly drawing it out in the Piano Roll View.
 
Now, I am not saying this just to posit an ideal that we should be making our own beats... I am saying it because I think if you work thru the process of making it easy for you to write out beats then you will transcend the mechanics of that and you will start thinking about your beats more effectively, you'll select the most appropriate beats for what you want to do, and your music will become a more well defined expression of your intent. I think it is very difficult to get that far by selecting beats from a library.
 
 
 
Ironically, I thought a great drummer playing brushes would really lend support to your sound :-) but I am eager to hear more of what you perceive your sound to be. :-)
 
all the best,
mike
 

It would be definitely more satisfying to create my own beats, and it's something I will start doing. But for now lack of time and lack of knowing other musicians force me to use Groove Monkee.
Time goes mostly to developing my voice, so I'm glad you liked that :)
 
And thanks for your constructive comments!

Dick,
 
I think they sound good, you may just need to mix it up a bit more with your patterns and fills.  What drum samples or tone generator are you using to trigger the MIDI files?    It is tough to program drums to capture the velocities of a real player, at the very least, extremely time consuming.  It is much easier to tweak MIDI loops created by real drummers or get a real drummer to play it.  Personally I stopped programming drums from scratch years ago because I just don't have the patience or time to do it anymore. 
 
BTW - I like your singing, you should definitely focus on that and leave the drumming up to the loops.  

Dear Dick,
 
I totally understand why you rather use readymade midi pattern than create them yourself...same with me. I HATE to create them by myself, and I therefore suck at it :-)
 
Your voice is cool, and I already compared it to Elvis Costello - which is a compliment!
 
 

@markno: I use Session Drummer 3 with the the DarkLordOfTheSeth program. I didn't necessarily want it to sound like a real drummer. In this style (Westcoast beats) it's not very uncommon to use a drum computer. However, once I have time I will try and experiment. My aim is to create some jazz/hip hop crossover style.
 
@speedtom: Guess who's one of my favorite singers? So yeah, that IS a compliment! Thanks.

The drums did not work at all, for me, and the cymbal swell sounded like a toilet flushing...
The vocal performance & quality, however, was outstanding... I also liked the AC Bass and the EP... Love this old standard, & you nailed the vocal... keep on singing... 

@notnat: haha, toilet flushing!  it isn't a cymbal swell, it's a Rapture sound, that comes with Sonar.
Thanx for the compliment on the vocals.