[ File this under rants. Get my new book if you enjoy this type of thing. ]
Hey, everybody stop talking about “what the music wants”, “what the music requires” like it’s something outside yourself. The music doesn’t want or require anything, it is the thing you, the musician, are attempting to create and make good.
Own your s**t. You are the creator. The music is actually the product of your judgments, and has to be what you do with it, for good or ill.
Hopefully what you do to the music will be the product of your musical ear, and not of “I want to put in this thing I’ve been working on”, or of “I am an awesome drummer, this is my moment of greatness.” If your musical ear isn’t giving you anything to work with on a piece of music (like if it, or the situation, are not good, and/or your ear isn’t good enough), you’ll be playing from your knowledge, which hopefully is adequate to credibly perform the piece. Or maybe you’ll be playing on orders— somebody tells you what to play and you execute it for them, exercising minimal judgement of your own, other than to be present and consent to performing the job.
These are all affirmative decisions. However conservatively or dramatically or invisibly you play is your decision— or limitation, if it’s the only thing you are able to do. Personally I doubt your judgment (or mine) is good enough to decree what the music requires, we can only decide what we will do with our own drumming performance in this case.