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The 5 Best Rock Drummers Of All Time

The 5 Best Rock Drummers Of All Time

best rock drummers

It’s time to place honor where honor’s due — on the shoulders of drummers. A rock band is nothing without a good drummer. So it’s time we talk about the best rock drummers of all time.

Some of these drummers you may expect to see on this list, and some you may not…

John Bonham

Thunder. Power. Authority.

Those are the words you typically think of when you think of Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham. His drumming was revolutionary and carried the band to success. Even his band members say that Zeppelin wouldn’t have been nearly as good as they were without him.

And this fantastic skill showed during live performances especially. The band would go on long ad-lib jam sessions on stage and Bonham would get to blow people’s minds with his solos. His solos became so famous that people started nicknaming it “Moby Dick,” which would sometimes last up to half an hour.

Sadly, he passed away on September 25, 1980, forever keeping him a legend.

Phil Collins

Phil Collins’ name is synonymous with epic drum fills.

He got a successful start with the 70s band Genesis as their drummer and, shortly thereafter, their lead singer (taking over for Peter Gabriel). In 1981, he released his first solo album, Face Value, which included the hit song “In The Air Tonight” (it was a No 2 hit in the U.K. and in the Top 20 in the U.S.). That album ended up being bigger than any Genesis album was at that time.

But he wasn’t close to being done.

From 1984 to 1990, he had 13 straight songs be Top Ten hits in the U.S. And he did all this while continuing to front Genesis.

See, music world, drummer’s ain’t stupid.

Neil Peart

Neil Peart is considered by many to be the best rock drummer of all time. The Canadian-born lyricist and drummer helped make the band Rush one of the most successful rock bands of its time. They’ve played together for over 35, sold over 27.5 million records in the U.S., and created their own sub-genre of rock.

This is, in large part, thanks to Peart’s unique and intricate drumming style as well as his long and complicated drum solos. Canada even decorated him with the highest honor possible for a civilian, making him an Officer of The Order of Canada.

Truly one of the best.

Alex Van Halen

Alex Van Halen formed the band (you guessed it) Van Halen, formerly called Mammoth. In the late 70s, the band signed a record deal — not long after Alex almost lost one of his fingers in a machine shop accident.

The power behind Van Halen is thanks to Alex’s in-your-face yet dynamic drumming style. His style even got a nickname — the “brown sound” — which refers to how warm his snare drum sounded.

And on top of being an amazing drummer, Alex also sings and plays piano very well. And whether he’s on drums, singing, or piano, he knows how to play what’s right for the song and not take the whole thing over.

Buddy Rich

Buddy Rich wasn’t a rock drummer, but he could’ve easily taken on any of the other drummers on this list in a duel.

Many people consider Rich to be the best drummer of all time, or at least in the jazz world. Gene Krupa, a jazz legend, said Buddy was “the greatest drummer ever to have drawn breath.”

If you spend seven decades drumming and performing as Rich did, you’re bound to be considered one of the best.

Starting his career at just four years old, Rich played regularly on Broadway, showing audiences that his forte was speed and precision. He went on to play with Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and many more well-known performers.

Here’s A Challenge…

Do you strive to be half the drummer these guys were/are? Then try this (you may already have): play along with a John Bonham solo, try to drum as powerfully as Neil Peart, or attempt to keep up with the speed of Buddy Rich.

It’s a great way to push yourself to improve!

Quick Custom Drum Head Turnaround Time – VintageLogos.com

Your gig is next week and you need a custom drum head fast. Vintagelogos.com is your place to get it made.

We ship out most printed drum heads within a 2-4 business day turnaround (plus shipping days). VL has a proven rotating system that works to get your custom drumheads made quickly. We offer a high quality made product with a quick custom drum head turnaround time.

Your band will stand out from the crowd in no time!

VL is a privately and family owned business strategically located in Cincinnati, OH. Thanks to our location, we can ship products fast.

We can ship 1-day FedEx ground/home delivery to:

  • Kentucky
  • Indiana
  • Ohio
  • Chicago
  • Nashville
  • Parts of Michigan

We can ship 2-day ground to:

  • New York
  • Boston
  • Atlanta
  • Dallas
  • Florida

It takes 4 days to ship to:

  • Los Angeles
  • Seattle
  • Portland

Not to worry — if you need your drumhead faster, we offer RUSH services.

Wonder what your custom drum head turnaround time is for your state? See the FedEx map below for the number of shipping days to your location.

We can virtually ship to any address in the world including International countries. We use the most reliable shipping companies to make sure your order gets to you on time. Refer to our Shipping & Turnaround page for more info about shipping time frame on certain products.

Want to know what our customers say about our turnaround time? Here is some feedback from our Facebook page:

David Foust
reviewed VintageLogos — ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ October 26, 2017 ·
Their product is awesome and the delivery was quick. I’m not sure what else one could ask for. 🙂

Brock Landers
reviewed VintageLogos — ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ August 31 ·
A huge thank you Jen and everyone at Vintage Logos. We were asked to open for a National Act last minute and I placed my order. As promised it showed up a few days later and looks amazing!
You Guys Rock!
#bossnova

StĂŠphanie DorĂŠ
reviewed VintageLogos —⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ March 27 ¡I’m so glad I found Vintage Logos to create an incredible bass drum head for my husband’s band… Train Gate 66 will look awesome on stage for their next shows!!
It just came in today, only a few days after I made my order…
You made an excellent job, thanks a lot!!!!

Try Our Online Design App
Start Designing by choosing a drum head size and brand. Select your background color. Use your photos, logos, and graphics. Type text, place manufacturer logos. Add Mic Holes, Ports Rings, Kickports and more. Save your designs to our server and reorder at any time. Our online Drumhead Builder ROCKS and so will you. We offer efficient one-on-one customer service with a fast custom drum head turnaround time. Give Vintage Logos a try today.

One Simple Way to Improve Your Marching Band

If you were to think of a way to improve the appearance of your marching band, what comes to mind first: practicing better and tighter formations? Selecting new and improved uniforms? Is there even one simple way to improve your marching band?

What about improving the look of your band’s instruments? What if your instruments could create a powerful image that is specific to ONLY your marching band?

Let’s consider bass drum heads, for example. Usually, these are plain and generic, but if what we told you they’re actually a blank canvas – a canvas for you to feature your school’s name and mascot?

Improve Your Marching Band With MarchingHeads

Enter the MarchingHeads from Vintage Logos! These are bass drum heads that are fully customizable, allowing you to revolutionize the look of your marching band. Let’s explain…

First off, MarchingHeads help your band be identified better on the field since the school’s name and mascot is printed on each of the drum heads. This, in turn, helps increase the exposure and publicity of your marching band.

Additionally, MarchingHeads add a competitive edge to your band since they’ll have a unique look that won’t be matched by any other marching band.

These thoughts are reflected by Harold J. Fooster Jr, Assistant Band Director at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Here’s what he said:

The … drum heads were great. We got a lot of compliments on their look and sound. When we performed at the Honda Battle of the Bands in Atlanta, GA in front of 65,000 fans, the drum heads were the talk of the event. People loved them and asked me about them.


If you’re looking for one simple way to improve the look of your marching band, we think this is it!

Some may wonder, however, are the MarchingHeads worth the cost? Our school has a limited budget and we can only afford to spend money on what really matters? The answer is that custom drum heads are an investment and they improve your marching band.

If funding is tight, consider raising support from parents, band boosters, or local businesses! Remember to tell them about the impact that MarchingHeads will have on your marching band and how it’s one easy way for them to improve their look on the field.

How to Design a Custom Drum Head (Part 2)

In our last post, we provided an overview of the basic steps needed to design a custom drum head. Those steps included adding text, shapes, and artwork to your design, as well as configuring portholes and other design elements unique to drum heads. All of these steps were done using our free online designer app here at Vintage Logos.

Today we will look at the more advanced features of the designer app, as well as provide you with some design tips. This will help ensure that the design of your custom drum head looks just the way you want it: absolutely stunning!

The Vintage Logos Designer App: Advanced Features & Design Tips

To begin, go ahead and launch the designer app as before. You’ll initially have to select the desired drum head size and brand. Then, if you have a saved design that you’d like to improve or finish, you can open that. Otherwise, create a new design!

Show/Hide the Grid

When designing, symmetry is very important — you want everything to look balanced and even. An easy way to achieve that is to line up everything to a grid. This feature can be easily enabled by clicking the “SHOW GRID” button at the bottom of the designer app. Once clicked, a grid will appear over the drum head. Keep in mind that each square in the grid represents 2 square inches in real life.

If at any point you’d like to turn off the grid again, simply click “HIDE GRID.”


Align Your Graphics and Text

In a similar way as the grid above, aligning allows your design to look as balanced and symmetrical as possible. Maybe you want to move all of the elements in your design into the very center or perhaps you want to align your text to one side or another. Whatever the case, here’s how you can do that:

Take a look at the left side of the designer app. Each element you add to your design (text, shapes, clip art, etc) is organized in a menu there. When you click on a specific element in that menu (or even the element in the design itself) you’re given a sub-menu of various editing options. One of those options is “align.” When you click on that, you’re given a menu with various alignment options, including a link to “align all items at one time.” Simply click the desired option and go from there!

Move Layers Up or Down

When adding and manipulating elements in your design, you may find that you need multiple elements stacked on top of each other. For example, you may have a piece of text that you’d like in front of a background image. This can be achieved by using the Layer Up and Layer Down feature.

This feature is available in the same sub-menu as the alignment option above. Once you’ve selected an element of your design, simply click the buttons “to front” or “to back” in the available sub-menu. This causes the element to move towards the foreground or background in the design. In addition, the element is reordered in its position in the menu on the left side of the app.

Design Effects

Most of the elements in your design have effects that you can add to them as well. These can be accessed via the sub-menu for each design element on the left side of the app. Here’s an overview of the effects you can choose from:

  • Distort causes the element to bend or stretch from its original shape
  • Outline (available for text and shapes only) adds a stroke outlining each letter of the text or a stroke outlining the entire shape
  • Rotate
  • Blur + and Blur – cause the element to appear more or less blurry and out of focus
  • Opacity + and Opacity – cause the element to be more or less transparent, allowing visibility of the element(s) and background underneath
  • Shadow adds a drop shadow to the element
  • Flip and Mirror

Need More Info?

If you’d like to continue reading about how to design your custom drum head, including best practices for professional design results, we recommend our Design Tips & Issues page. This covers such issues as bleed margin, color differences between computer screens and printed products, and much more.

 

How to Design a Custom Drum Head (Part 1)

Have you been wanting to design your own logo for a custom drum head but are intimidated by the process? Maybe you have an idea of what you want it to look like, but you’re not sure where or how to start?

Well today we have a post just for you! We’re going to walk you through, step-by-step, in designing your own custom drum head logo. Here at Vintage Logos we offer an online designer app that is free and easy to use. This app allows you to create anything from simple to sophisticated designs. What’s more, you can save your designs online to return to at a later time! Let’s take a look…

The Vintage Logos Designer App: A Tutorial On Making A Custom Drum Head

Step 1: Go to the online designer app

Step 2: Select your drum head

Before you can begin designing, you have to select the desired brand and size of drum head. This is important because the size of the drum head will affect how much available space you will have in your design. Once you have selected your drum head, click on “CREATE NEW DESIGN.”

Step 3: Start designing!

Below are some of the basic features of using our designer app. For more advanced features, stay tuned for part two of this post!

  • Set the background color: this is available in a scrolling menu on the lefthand side of the app. There are over 50 background colors to choose from!
  • Add text: this is done by clicking the “TEXT” link in the top-left corner of the app. There are lots of options to customize your text but we’ll just look at the two simplest for now: color and fonts. Color allows you to select from over 50 colors for your text and fonts gives you hundreds of font choices to choose from. You can also sample additional colors from files you upload.
  • Add shapes: this option is available via the “SHAPE” link at the top-left of the app. You have the choice of a square, circle, star, arrow, and more. (More on this in part two of this post!)
  • Add clip art, stock photos, and more: built directly into our app you have access to thousands of background images, clip art, and manufacturer logos, all free of charge! This can be done by clicking the “CLIPART” link at the top-left of the app. In addition, you have access to the millions of stock photos available on Fotolia.com, offered to you at a nominal fee.
  • Upload your own artwork: perhaps you have a pre-existing image you want to use in the design, or maybe you previously designed your full logo in a different app. Either way, these images can be added by clicking the “UPLOAD” link at the top of the app. You have the option to upload images from your computer or from Facebook or Instagram. You can also use this feature to create a QR code.
  • Add mic holes to your drum head: as you may know, adding a mic/port hole to your drum head gives your kick drum more versatility as well as improving its sound. It allows you to insert a microphone for live performance or recording and it also gives your kick drum more projection and attack. (Learn more about port holes at this page). You can easily add this feature by clicking the “MIC HOLES” link at the top-left of the app.

custom drum head
Step 4: Order (or save) your design

When you’re happy with the design of your drum head, simply click “ADD TO CART” in the top-right of the app to calculate the price. Then begin ordering your own custom drum head.

If you’d like to save the design and come back to it at a later time, you can click on “MY DESIGNS” at the top of the app. This gives you the option to “SAVE CURRENT DESIGN,” which you can then access in the future to continue working with.

Part 2 Coming Soon!

In the upcoming part two of this post, we will look at the more advanced features of the designer app. In addition, we will offer some design tips to make sure your logo looks as good as possible!

custom drum head

Building Your Marching Band’s Image with Custom Drum Heads

Every marching band director knows the importance of marching band image. It needs to be a strong and compelling image. When the band looks good performing on the field, they leave a far more memorable impression on the crowd.

The look of the band makes a difference to those watching. And it also makes a difference to the band themselves! It “feels good to look good” as the saying goes. And in the same way, a strong image boosts the confidence of the band and helps build a spirit of comradery.

One particular strategy that many marching bands use is to implement matching custom bass drum heads. This custom look immediately gives them an edge. It sets them apart from any other band out there. And it brings a new continuity and uniformity to the band’s image.

In the past, these custom designs were painted directly onto the calfskin drumheads of the day. However, as plastic heads started replacing calfskin drumheads, the use of custom drum heads fell by the wayside as the paint no longer adhered well. However, with recent technological developments, it is now once again possible to add custom designs to the drum heads.

Vintage Logos’ MarchingHeads

If you are looking to add this unique element to your marching band’s image, Vintage Logos offers you the perfect solution: the MarchingHeads custom marching bass drum heads! We are the industry leader for custom drum heads and offer only the highest quality products.

Our MarchingHeads are created specifically with the needs of marching bands in mind. The designs are weatherproof and won’t fade due to a strong UV protectant. In addition, the design will not scratch and flake off and looks good in photographs due to its low glare finish. These custom drum heads are made using your choice of Aquarian or Evans drum heads. They are available in sizes ranging from 14 inches to 32 inches.

When it comes to the artwork of the designs, you can provide us with your own pre-made image, or you can utilize our free resources including thousands of stock images and clipart. Alternately, you can hire our in-house design department to help you create your custom design! This is a great choice if you’d like the help of a professional team in creating a design that will look truly stunning.

We offer a quick turnaround time for our MarchingHeads, completing an order in 14 days or less. However, if you need yours extra quick, don’t worry – we offer rush services too!

Remember, not only are the MarchingHeads a great choice for school marching bands, but they also can be used by military bands and pipe & drum bands too! If you’re ready to take your band’s image to the next level, visit the Vintage Logos webstore now and order your own set of MarchingHeads!