Copyrighting your material
 

I'm pretty new to the whole recording music thing so I'm not sure what my first move is. I do know that I wrote a pretty good riff to a song and I played it for a couple of shtheads at a party. Next thing I know I hear that one of those shtheads has basically ripped my riff off and has added his own stuff to it and is calling it his own. In the future if I write a piece of music does anybody know how to go about copyrighting it so some shthead doesn't steal it before you have a chance to record it? Do I need to go to a lawyer to have the thing copywritten?

Don't play your sh*t for people you don't trust..I mean, why were you playin your sh*t around someone who would possibly steal it??