[Super beginner question: Is it okay to start with midi files?]

But if the end result is a song that's up tonOCR standards (or not, if I just wanted to do a cover), nobody's going to care if I started with a midi file from the Internet or did it all by hand, right?

[Super beginner question: Is it okay to start with midi files?]

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Just copying a MIDI, replacing all instruments and calling it your own song is not the way to go.

 

I definitely wasn't planning on doing that.  I was thinking more along the lines of, for example importing the midi with a melody and bassline, then add chords, drums, ect. Basically as an alternative to learning the song from sheet music or transcribing by ear and then putting it in manually note-by-note.  In the end it would be a full remix, I just didn't want to get in trouble at some point for using an already done midi as the foundation.

 

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I've personally only done that once, and I felt it limited the creativity that would have come about if I had just listened to the song and thought about how I wanted to transcribe it by ear. I get that not everyone has the knack for doing that, but it's a great skill to learn.

Of course.  I'm working on that, but I'm still a long ways off from being proficient at it and I don't see why I shouldn't do other aspects of remixing and arranging in the meantime.

[Super beginner question: Is it okay to start with midi files?]

I'm not great at transcribing things by ear.  If I want to remix a song, is it okay to start by loading a midi file from vgmusic.com into my DAW, or is that plagiarism?