Can anyone suggest ways to help me improve my left hand on piano/keyboard?

Nothing works like practice. For practice, play the same thing with your left hand and your right hand. Start slow, then work up the pace. Do scales and bass riffs. Then, later in the practice, work on independence.

Get one of these

This was my main issue when I started playing, as I’m originally a guitarist.

I’m hardly a professional, so I can only tell you what I did. Maybe it will help.

I started with scales, playing it with both hands, one octave away from each other. Ascend and descend, playing the notes simultaneously but one higher and one lower (obviously). I started slow and built up speed when muscle memory kicked in. When you’ve accomplished that, I’d move to playing a simple chord (D) and playing the corresponding scale with the other hand, running up and down the keyboard. When you’re playing fast-ish (let’s say 4/4, the chord in half notes and scale eighth or, if you’re daring, sixteenth notes), switch hands so that the one playing the chord now plays the scale, and vice versa.

Now, for the biggie. Choose a scale (I went with D minor on my first run through, I believe). Play descending with your right hand and ascending with your left hand. You’ll be going slow, trust me. When you hit the midway point on the ivories and your hands meet, do the opposite so that the right hand ascends and left descends. Go slow, try not to miss a note. Repeat.

When that is up to a descent speed, switch scales. What I did (and this is time consuming): started with the A major scale, moved to A minor, hit an A major chord on both a high and low octave, then B major, then B minor, B major chord and so on till I got to the G major chord.

Hope that helps, it’s a simple exercise, but for a beginner it helps. A lot.

Oh, and another thing. When you’re comfortable with scales and chords, you can do really fun things with it. For example:

Turn on a simple-ish song with a clear chord progression. My suggestion? House of the Rising Sun – The Animals. The chord progression in the song is A minor, C major, D major, F major. The next part goes something similar to A minor, E major, A minor, E major. It repeats to Am, C, D, F.

Start playing the chords along with the song. Switch to scales. Improvise, play notes along with the song. Enjoy it. Use the exercises above, like playing a chord with the right hand and a scale with the left. Mix it around, and feel it, you know? do your best Ray Charles impersonation

You can use any song you like that has an easy-to-follow chord progression.

Enjoy.

Practice with just your left hand for a while until you develop some new stuff with it that’s second nature. I’ve had the same problem.. It’s a tricky thing getting all of those digits to work in unison.. perfect practice makes perfect.

Destroy everything!

Hanon . . . over and over and over and over again

To improve coordination, practice doing other things you would normally do right-handed with your left- brushing your teeth, buttering your bread, using a mouse.

simple finger excercise, just like with your right, before practice or recital, practice scales chords and arpeggios with healthy hand positioning, and you will become more left-hand competent.