Search For An Existing Musical Phrase?

It's hard to come up with unique ideas and some of my writing sounds so familiar but I have no way to know if it's copied from something I may have heard somewhere before.

Is there any way to search for a musical phrase that's already been written?

If you named the clip. A search tool that compares grooves, melodies and timing and presents similarities would be interesting. But if the Library of Congress gets it's hands on it, there will be alot of people feeling George Harrison's plagarism lawsuit pains. LOL

Not to be contrary, but actually there are 12 notes ...

It's all just one long song

yeah good idea probably will do that at some point, beagle.

.... if the right software can be developed that would tell you where you might have heard something like or the same as your own composition that would be great. .....

You guys've probably heard of this iphone app:  http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/13/iphone-app-review-shazam-helps-you-name-that-tune/  I've read all you need is a few seconds worth of sample for the comparison to execute effectively.  This app of course is looking for an exact match, but probably won't be long before someone extends the algorithm for just the purpose contemplated in this thread.  Can't imagine how that would work technically.  Then again, never would have imagined that a small digital clip of a published recording could find a match within the entire Apple database after few seconds' search...

FWIW,  Ron


EDIT  - I'm assuming the comparison is between digital footprints, not ID tags.  Don't know how tags work.  Are they actually repeated continuously in the stream?

 
Sorry for off topic but:
 
Hey JohnnyV,
 
That's a cool old Masco amp you have there. I used to have an ME-18. Wish I still had it. There is something about those Masco amps from the '40s and '50s that was just magical.
 
 
 

A few years ago there was a New Zealand Digital Library project called Meldex ("MELody inDEX") that was supposed to do this very thing.  You could go to their webpage and it would somehow take your snippet of melody (either hummed or entered somehow) and it would match it up with songs in its database.  I think I actually tried it once.  Problem is, that was six or seven years ago, and the two links I have (http://www.nzdl.org/musiclib and http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~nzdl/meldex) don't work anymore (at least as of today).
 
Found an old paper about it though:
 
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may97/meldex/05witten.html 
   

12 notes? Damn, no wonder I'm having problems! Just testing to see if you where awake, really!
I wrote a song called "Long Way Down" back in the 80's. Sarah McLachlan stole it from me in the 90's but I let her get away with it because it sounds totally different and the words are not even close and then she changed the title to Ice Cream.  
Then you can play some songs backwards and also be in trouble with the music biz lawyers.

Off topic ( but what isn't here)
The Masco is the ultimate harp amp, it also helps heat my studio. It served duty as the PA head at the Christina Lake Dance Hall in the 40's with the big bands. I found it in a closet there and asked if I could have it. Had it worked over by a tech. My Avatar is not my Masco but from the net, mine is a little different. They were made in New York by a dude named Mark Simpson last one made 35 years ago. 

last one made 35 years ago. 

That was when amps only went to like 2 or 3 right?

An index of popular songs and tunes by musical phrase does exist. Indeed it is quite famous. It is not online as far as I know; it is a book published in the middle of the last century. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the author or of the book but I remember finding it in the library in the '60s. I did do a search online a few years back and found information about him. He became a professional consultant on plagiarism. In fact, I think there is an article about him on Wikipedia. He is deceased and so his book is of value for older songs only. I will try to find info about him again and if I do, I will do a follow-up post.
 
Okay, I did a search and found that Google has applied for a patent for just such a search engine it is US 6678680 B1. Read about it at: www-dot-google-dot-com/patents/US6678680 ,substituting a dot for -dot- (this site doesn't allow URLs)
 
Guess what? A Swiss database does exist where you can search by note sequence. It appears to have classical themes only, unfortunately, but here it is: www-dot-rism-ch-dot-org/pages/database
It could be useful if someone accuses you of plagiarism. If you can find a similar phrase in the Public Domain classical literature, you will probably destroy any case they thought they had. It could also be useful to consult before you accuse someone else of plagiarising YOU.