Hey friend,

I'll be honest with you - for the longest time, I thought piano was one of the easiest instruments to mix.

I mean, think about it. Most of the time we're working with incredible VSTs like Keyscape, or beautiful sampled pianos, or even live recordings from amazing instruments like a Rhodes or Roland. The sounds are already so good, right?

Wrong.

Well, not completely wrong. The sounds ARE good. But here's what I learned the hard way: having a great piano sound and having a piano that fits in a worship mix are two completely different things.

The Moment It All Changed

I was mixing this song by Elijah Hickman (incredible artist, by the way - I'll link the full song below the video), and I had four different piano tracks going. A standard modern piano, a second vibey piano panned left, an electric piano panned right, and this beautiful "ballad" keys sound with tons of shimmer reverb for the big chorus hits.

Each one sounded amazing solo. But together in the mix? They were fighting with the guitars, getting buried by the vocals, and making everything sound muddy and unclear.

That's when I realized something crucial about piano in modern worship: It's not about making the piano sound incredible. It's about making the piano serve the song.

The Foundation Instrument Mindset

Here's what changed my entire approach: Piano is a foundational instrument in modern worship. It needs to be treated as such.

Think about it - piano sits right in that crucial midrange where vocals live, where guitars compete, where synths and keys are battling for space. If you don't EQ it properly, it'll either disappear completely or take over the entire mix.

My Go-To 4-Move Approach

After years of overthinking piano EQ, I've landed on this simple approach that works every single time:

1. High-pass around 100 Hz - Let that kick and bass breathe (unless it's just keys and acoustic)
2. Cut around 121 Hz - Get those piano notes out of the way of the bass guitar
3. Cut that ugly midrange - Usually somewhere between 300-600 Hz where it gets boxy and loses articulation
4. Small cut in the vocal range - Around 2K-5K to make room for vocals

That's it. Four moves. Nothing crazy.

The Secret Weapon Nobody Talks About

But here's where it gets really interesting. Before I even touch EQ, I'm doing some individual processing on each piano track. Just basic stuff - pulling out low end here, cutting some mids there, especially on that high shimmer keys sound where I'm high-passing almost up to 400 Hz because I only want the sparkly top end.

And then - this is my secret weapon - I run the whole piano bus through Soothe 2 with this preset called "Less Spikes, More Size."

I didn't create this preset, but man, it's beautiful. It's literally in the piano presets folder, and it does something magical. It takes out resonances while somehow making sampled pianos feel more like actual grand pianos. I don't know what kind of juju is going on there, but it sounds incredible.

The Guitar Relationship Game-Changer

Here's something most people don't think about: piano EQ is just as much about making room for guitars as it is about the piano itself.

Piano and guitars are constantly battling for that 200Hz to 4kHz range. They're both so important in modern worship that you can't just favor one over the other.

What I've learned is that I like piano to take up the 500Hz to 1.5kHz range, while guitars sit more in the 600Hz to 2kHz area. Obviously you don't pull everything else out, but when you sculpt them to work together instead of fighting, everything just clicks.

Context Is Everything

In the video, I do something that really drives this point home. When I solo the piano with all my EQ moves, you might think "that sounds worse!" But when you hear it in the full mix context... suddenly everything makes sense.

The piano sits perfectly. It's supporting the song without fighting for attention. The guitars come out of the mix better. Everything has its own space.

That's what good piano mixing sounds like.

Watch Me Break Down Every Move

I recorded the entire process so you can see exactly where I'm cutting and boosting, and more importantly, hear why each move works in the context of a full worship arrangement.

Watch the complete piano EQ breakdown here →

The Bigger Picture

But honestly, the biggest lesson here isn't about specific frequencies. It's about mindset.

When I'm mixing a worship song, I always try to keep this question in the back of my mind: "Is this EQ move going to help bring someone closer to the Lord?"

As crazy as that sounds, I want to make the listening experience as pleasurable as possible. That means thinking about how each instrument serves the song, serves the message, serves the moment of worship.

It's not about how amazing this keyboard sounds solo. It's about how it fits into the mix, how it helps the entire song, how it helps that person listening grow closer with God.

There are bigger things happening than just making a killer keyboard sound.