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?

I wouldn't worry about it. There are only 11 notes x infinite ways to put them together and it has all been done a million times etc.
believe me, nobody is going to shoot you if you steal a lik from another song.
The internet searches for text and I don't believe you can search for notation as per say.

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

yeah, agreed about "been done before" and not much way to avoid duplication.

I think it would be great if there was a huge database of melodies where you could submit notation and it could match it up. Actually, I guess it could use audio and note recognition as well. Wonder if it could be done.

Curious also about where to look for the math on how many combinations those 11 notes can be arranged, including rhythm.

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

lol I used 11 so as not to be contrary. haha.

It wasn't called ElevenTone Systems, it was TwelveTone!

It's all just one long song

if you want some feedback from other people, try this:

http://www.namemytune.com/nmt.asp

if someone says your song sounds like song "A" - then you can go listen to song "A" and decide for yourself if it's too close or not.

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

I think goomyz idea's a great one and 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. Although most of us would probably give up composing if we really knew just how many songs sounded like ours.
The Dead Kennedys blatently ripped off a bass line of mine that I wrote three years before they recorded "lets lynch the landlord" :)
I imagine there would be a lot of music biz lawyers using any site that could do that.

Steve