Are you looking at fills playing with a band or just when practicing?
Two totally different beasts......
For a band, it has to be for the music.
Agreed. It's easy to play the same fills when you are alone practicing. I've crystallized my fill philosophy to 2 guidelines. If I'm covering a tune, I have to do all the necessary fills, if any. That's easy, I'm replicating their stuff. If we are doing originals, or remakes our way, I totally base my fills on the other players. I just listen to them and if I feel it I play it, otherwise I am keeping the groove simmering. Nothing pre planned as far as fills go whatsoever. I can tell when fills are pre planned because they stick out instead of melt in. Fills should be spontaneous and based on what is going on.
My main band's guitarist leads me on a merry chase sometimes, it's always pretty high level stuff with him, so there is no pre planning of fills, the only thing you can do is listen hard and react quick. Just last night he stuck a portion of The Beatle's "Baby You Can Drive My Car" (which I never played with him prior, he just assumes I know everything) right in the middle of "Mustang Sally"....For a few seconds I was like what song is he doing?
I think going into a song with an agenda to pull off a certain fill is a bad way to approach the song. Playing accents, defining the song structure, whatever that may entail, marking chord changes with a simple crash...I don't consider them fills. That's where I concentrate my focus, on the structure, the chord changes, accents, and keeping it smooth and flowing. Fills are pretty much the last thing on my list of priorities, as they tend to disrupt the flow, at least in my world of groove based music. The richness of the beat and the support of the others deserves the lions share of the focus, fills are maybe 2% of what I play.
I like the guys that try so hard to do "cool" fills during the song, disrupting the groove, then at the endings, when it would really sound good for them to cut loose, they just putz out. Lol. Wrong priorities. Fills don't define the drummer, I'll never agree with that statement, it's a drummers feel that defines the drummer.