Trouble getting the Drummer Track to recognise rest notes

Question

Hi -
Having a frustrating time at the moment getting a Drummer Track to accurately follow another track and need some guidance.
I have a drum track that I've previously imported into Logic Pro from a BOSS DR-880 drum machine.
The midi data from the drum machine sits in a Software Instrument track with the East Bay+ drum patch applied to it.
It plays fine but has no soul, so I want to breathe life into it by getting a Logic Pro drummer to follow the drum machine track and use that instead.
This is where the frustration lies, as the Drummer Track is just not following the midi track accurately enough. The drum machine track utilises regular rest notes - accentuated beforehand with a kick/cymbal 'stab' - in both the verses and choruses, but try as I might I cannot get the drummer to recognise these rest notes or perform fills around them.
I've so far tried the following in an attempt to improve the situation:
- Created Arrangement Markers for each section of the midi track - i.e. intro, verse, chorus, bridge etc...
- In the drummer track editor, modified the settings for the above sections to try to get the drummer to accurately pick up the rest notes on the midi track
- In the drummer track editor, enabled 'Follow' for kick and snare on the drummer track and pointed it to the midi track
- In the midi track header, enabled it as a Groove Track and ticked the drummer track to follow the groove track
None of this tweaking is giving the desired result.
Yes - I can manually go in and adjust the drum track by converting it to midi and creating the rests, but then I've got to deal with a preceding fill that doesn't fit the rest note, meaning a lot of fiddling about and risk the flow of the Drummer Track that I wanted in the first place. I've also got a few more other songs to import from the drum machine that I know I'll have the same bother with.
Has anyone had similar experiences to this? How did you overcome them?
Any advice or tips welcome.
Thanks!
MacBook Air  |  1.4 GHz Intel Core i5  |  8 GB RAM  |  250GB SSD  |  OS X 10.9.4
Logic Pro X v10.0.7  |  MOTU MicroBook II

Answer 1

First, you are not going to be able to put a MIDI region on a Drummer track to have the computer drummer make it lifelike.  In fact, if you take a Drummer generated region, turn it into MIDI, try and make some edits, then turn it back to a Drummer region you will lose all your edits.  The Drummer plays what it plays.  Likewise, by telling the Drummer to follow the groove of your MIDI region, you are telling the Drummer to play its own pattern, but to match the kick and snare to the lifeless region.  That's only if you use a drummer region - doesn't work for MIDI.
If you want to add life to your existing MIDI you can use some of the humanize options in MIDI transform.  Or, you could take a pretty good feeling Drummer region, convert it to MIDI, make a groove template out of that, then apply that to your lifeless region.  Be prepared for a few notes to miss the GT grid and move way out of line.