Quick question: when you add a piano to your mix, does it ever sound a little... flat? Present, but not big? Like it's sitting on top of the song rather than inside it?

I've been there. For a long time I assumed it was a plugin quality issue. Buy a better piano VST, problem solved.

Turns out, I was wrong — and the fix was something I'd never seen anyone talk about.

Here's the trick: duplicate your piano track, then flip the stereo image.

On a real piano, the bass notes are on the left and the treble on the right (from the player's perspective). When you duplicate the part and reverse it — bass right, treble left — and blend the two together, you get a piano that sounds genuinely enormous. Full, lush, and three-dimensional in a way that no amount of reverb alone can achieve.

It sounds like a weird thing to do. It works incredibly well.

That's just one of the techniques in my updated guide to mixing piano — I just published a major expansion of it with 24 tips covering everything from EQ and compression settings to the two-reverb technique that makes piano sound like it was recorded in a real room.

​→ Read: How to Mix Piano — 24 Tips for Making Piano Plugins Sound Lifelike​

A few other things in the article worth flagging:

• Why you should spend more time tweaking your piano plugin settings than your EQ — and what to actually dial in
• The two-reverb setup (plate + room) that makes solo piano sound huge without getting muddy
• How to mix piano against vocals, guitar, bass, and drums without frequency clashes

It's a long one, but worth bookmarking for the next time you're working on a piano-heavy track.

🎚 Now Availble: free access to How to Mix with EQ

Speaking of EQ — if the piano EQ section in that article left you wanting more, I'm about to open up free limited access to my How to Mix with EQ course.

It's built around the R.O.S.E. System: a four-step EQ framework that takes the guesswork out of getting clean, balanced mixes. No more tweaking and hoping. A clear process you can apply to any instrument, every time.

​Here's the link!​

— Evan StockMusicMusician.com

P.S. If you want the full EQ course plus every other course I've made, the All Access Pass has it all — including 10+ hours of advanced licensing strategy. Just putting it out there.