Hi I came to this website before when I started getting interested in game design and such, but I became busy and left. I am now working on making some music of my own via Forte Standard. I have some songs I think are good (mainly one), but I don't know how to find out if it violates copyright or not. Does anyone know how I can find out if my ideas have already been used or not?

Quote: Does anyone know how I can find out if my ideas have already been used or not?

To my knowledge there is no master database of all known melodies out there for you to cross reference. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Many times you may have a similar melody or rhythm to some other known piece but shortly into you'll go a different direction than the other piece. You'll change to another pattern, chord or approach. As long as you're not grossly copying famous pieces of music, you should be fine. There is also some emulation among a large number of composers and with so much music being written for a such a long period of time everything has already been done.

Vanilla Ice sampled Queens "Under Pressure" on his song Ice Ice Baby without permition & didn't pay royalties.

Paul Mccartny tried to sue another band who had clear similarities to a Beatles song and failed.

I'm not condoning using other peoples ideas, far from it. I'm just saying it's very, very hard to sue over music. Every chord structure has been used before, I think it's more about the "little" things that makes your music unique/original more than anything else.