A lot of my tunes use a few standard kick, hat, percussion samples.
Often for bass lines I’ll reuse the kick sample and trim the start point as a fake attack shave, then pitch it/overdrive it.
My hooks often come from synth loops I’ve made with Reaktor, Repro-5, my A4 or other gear. But I don’t use the whole loop.
Instead, I tweak the start point and length, and decay to find interesting phrases that have some motion recorded into them, and then I add more motion with the filter and LFO.
P-locking the start point for more variation of the phrase.
It’s surprisingly effective.
And since I am not using the whole loop, I’m not too concerned with BPM when making the loops. These loops just act as a raw fabric to cut from, and create something new.
Often I’ll reuse that loop sample on the main hook track, copied over to the 6th track as a counterpoint, pitched a 5th or an octave. And If I’m out of tracks, I’ll use it on the main hook track as FILL steps.
To save on RAM and not bog down my project with too many longer samples (loops) I’ll often start a new track by exploring what I’ve already used; what’s already in the “RAM folder”.
A lot of times there are segments of those used loops that I didn’t even touch, so I can get more mileage out of them, and hopefully not run out of RAM once I get up toward the maximum 96 patterns in the project.
I also have some Monark samples I got off a $10 pack on eBay or Reverb, can’t remember, plus some Samples From Mars synth samples.
They’re just single note and chord patches recorded for about 8 seconds each. I shortened them to 1 second with a slight fade out using sample batch processing software.
Additionally, single cycle samples work rather well in the M:S. I’ve only recently been digging into using it this way but so far I’m happy with the results