I've been playing since christmas, and i havent had any real lessons, i know a fair amount for not having played that long. I was curious if anyone had any good methods for training one hand to do something while the other hand played something else. laying down chords is easy, but id like to have a more complicated sound. any advice would be great

I'm in the same boat. Practically self taught, but i'd like to learn how to change the mind set so i can do arpeggios that change key while playing melody in the other hand (a la Moonlight Sonata)

Bach 2-part inventions are great to train your hand independence and cooperation. they're not too easy, but it'd be good to learn at least one.

The best hand training? Practise

Consider a related problem: How to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. Try it now and you probably won't be able to.

Try the actions HS (Hands Separate) first. Work up to a good speed, faster than you need, one hand at a time.

When you can do this confidently, you're ready for HT (Hands together). Start very slowly at first, thinking carefully about where each hand has to be. Get your hands in position. Play the notes(!) together. Then repeat for the next position. As you build speed, you'll find that one hand goes into 'autopilot', and you can concentrate your attention on the more difficult hand.

It's the same with music. I think it best to do a phase at a time like this (one, two or a few measures). You don't have to start at the beginning -- start at the most difficult part. That's the bit that will need the most practise, so do it first.

You say laying down chords is easy, but how exactly are you laying down your chords? Are you using boring, run-of-the-mill stacked triads? Sure, they're easy, but try getting familiar with every major/minor/7th/maj7th/dimished/augmented/sus2/sus4 chord in EVERY inversion in both hands--I mean try and MASTER them, know them inside and out (it's more managable taking one type of chord and moving it up/down in half steps as an exercise). It will take A LOT of hard work, but if you can't manufacture a more complex sound after that, then you might want to pick up a guitar. BTW, it actually all depends on what type of music you plan on playing. If you're trying to concentrate on classical music, learning all those chords would be a waste of time. Learning blues/gospel/jazz, pop, and trying to read lead sheets is where mastering chords becomes essential. The funny part is those are somewhat basic chords. The "hard" part comes when you have to start learning your alt chords, slash chords, Bbmaj7+9b13 extension type of chords.

I totally agree with the Bach invention advice. I'm learning one now and it's seriously giving me so much more dexterity in both hands, it's amazing!

A simple exercise is to play 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 in your right hand, stressing every 3rd beat, while your left hand only advances when the RH accentuates a note.

So what you play is: LH | RH

1 | 1 (stress)
- | 2
- | 3
2 | 4 (stress)
- | 5
- | 4
3 | 3 (stress)
- | 2
- | 1
4 | 2 (stress)
- | 3
- | 4
5 | 5 (stress)

...and back down again.

Then move up the scale. When you get this down, switch hands, so now it's the left hand that moves faster. For variation, put the stress on other beats.

I found this to be helpful for a beginner like me.