Making tunes is just plain difficult...

[funky lime]

kinda sad that your ego might need to be propped up like that.

I was happier playing my style of music on my own than having to compromise

sometimes you get so close to achieving self-awareness...

[crimsonwarlock]

But I used to answer ads for "keyboard player wanted" but nothing ever came of any of it.

When I started out (around 1980), I was one of maybe two or three people in town who actually had a synthesizer (in my case, the one I built), and several bands were begging me to join them. And that was even before I got to any useful level of playing a keyboard

[Uncle E]

But I used to answer ads for "keyboard player wanted" but nothing ever came of any of it. It turned out I was happier playing my style of music on my own than having to compromise to be in a band.

Great life lesson. "Here's what I don't like", "here's a personality type I don't get along with", "here's an area I'm not willing to compromise", etc. Few of the auditions I went to amounted to anything musically but they impacted my life in all sorts of other ways.

[BONES]

I only ever answered a handful of ads and only one ever got to a second rehearsal (and no further). None of the bands ever amounted to anything, I'm not sure any of them ever played any gigs and I was playing every week, so I'd have been wasting my time anyway. I'm not sure I'd have been happy not being the front-man anyway but you have to try this stuff to see what fits.

When I started out (around 1980), I was one of maybe two or three people in town who actually had a synthesizer (in my case, the one I built), and several bands were begging me to join them. And that was even before I got to any useful level of playing a keyboard

I was "popular" because I had a Roland Axis-1 keytar and bands thought that would be a good look for them. But I only used it because I had to do everything myself and being stuck behind a rack of synths wasn't very entertaining. Keytars are really hard to play with any level of subtlety because you pretty much can't have any velocity modulation (and aftertouch wasn't really a thing then). I didn't actually like playing it and didn't want to if I was going to be in a band. I eventually made a little pedestal stand for it so I could play it properly when I needed to and jump around with it strapped on the rest of the time. As soon as I started working with Craig as NOVAkILL, I retired the Axis-1 and never touched it again. I don't even remember what happened to it but I'd used it for the best part of a decade.

[jancivil]

Here's the thing. wait, a couple of things.
1) "making tunes" probably entails coming up with a melody on your lonesome. Not everyone is going to be apt for the task, ever. I'd venture to say almost no one.
2) Even those who aren't Mozart with major natual inclination may be able to get there with_some_work. It may take years.

When I was a kid, I had no ear for pitch. I had to acknowledge it, because people weren't having it when I sang, for instance.
Age 14, I had decided on a melodic instrument instead of drums. So I started working to take what I wanted off a record by ear. I remember vividly that the tune, Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater revival baffled me because of the turnaround riff after the chorus.
It changes tonic. I figured I should get it to where I could sing it reliably rather than just find positions on the guitar. One day, Eureka: the lick is at a fifth remove from the home key (not that I'd intellectualized it 'at a fifth up', I just replicated what was there by ear.) Know this, it wasn't automatic for me to find pitches by my voice. But I kept at it and found that 'two tonic areas' reality and the turnaround back to "I".

Fast forward: I experienced catastrophic injury working at age 31. Now, I stayed with music for a while and even had a guitar for most of the period following; over the next 15+ years. However there was probably some brain injury and I had lost my ear pretty much entirely, a form of amnesia, like.
So I'm back to where I was @14, doggedly finding intervals by ear, at age 49 (It was the flutes lick of the X-Files theme, one day I realized I have no clue what this actually is.).

Some had ease in this regard. It'll be a mistake to think it should be so for you when it isn't.

[crimsonwarlock]

I was "popular" because I had a Roland Axis-1 keytar and bands thought that would be a good look for them.

I had a DX100 (in addition to my DX7), that had that keytar-mode where you held some button during startup, and it switched the direction of the pitch- and modwheel. I used that as a keytar for a while (basically until I stopped gigging late nineties). Currently, I still have an Alesis Vortex in the studio, but I haven't touched it for years now.

[jancivil]

Also, while this follows so directly it might be very obvious, picking things - as much as you can get of it - off of recordings trains the ear but once you are emulating it on your instrument you get it, you have melody modeled for you in a way I doubt can be taught. So while my beginning should seem pathetic - no good ear but one day (blame Jimi Hendrix) I'm moving to a melodic instrument - by the time I was 17 I was a player. I was no chopsmeister but I could invent melody on the spot.

If you want to create music learn it in full, play music for a good while as primary. You can fool around all the time but... the rule of thumb I grew up with was ten years, then you can think about saying "I'ma write music now".

[BONES]

What is this "melody" of which you speak?