How it’s organised · K.O. II guide

3.1BasicsTE guide §6

Projects, groups, patterns and scenes

Everything you make lives in a project — think of it as one song. Inside, four groups hold the sounds, each group has its own patterns, and scenes record which pattern every group is playing. Song mode then strings scenes together.

Project: A song. There are nine, opened by holding MAIN and a pad from 1–9 until P shows. Pad settings are saved per project.
Group: Twelve sounds on the pads, selected with A–D. Each group sequences its own patterns — Groups.
Pattern: A group’s sequence, up to 99 bars long. Each group has up to 99 patterns per project.
Track: One pad’s notes inside a pattern — the display says TRK when you erase one. Each pattern has twelve.
Scene: A snapshot of which pattern each group plays — a section of the song. Up to 99 per project — Scenes.
Song position: A slot in song mode’s list that plays a scene. There are 99 — Song mode.

Limits

Item	Per	Maximum
Projects	Device	9
Groups	Project	4, with 12 pads each
Patterns	Group, per project	99
Pattern length	Pattern	99 bars
Scenes	Project	99
Song positions	Project	99
Notes	Project	80,000

From the community

1. SCENES & PATTERNS // KO II teenage engineering // beginner tutorial
SON WU
Part 1 of SON WU’s beginner series: projects, scenes and patterns explained clearly before you start recording.

3.2BasicsTE guide §4.1, §6

Groups

Press A, B, C or D to switch the pads to that group’s twelve sounds. Each group plays its own pattern, so groups work like four instrument parts you can mix and match while the music runs.

A layout that works (TE’s suggestion)

A — drums
B — bass
C — melodic sounds
D — loops and your own samples (start with it empty)

Holding a group key and pressing −/+ or typing a number picks that group’s pattern — see Selecting and creating patterns. Holding FX and a group key solos it (The send effect).

Key combinations

Hold A–D + move FADER: Sets the group’s project volume.

From the community

3. FADER & GROUPS // KO II teenage engineering // beginner tutorial
SON WU
Part 3: demonstrates every fader assignment by ear, plus how groups and recorded fader moves work.

3.3BasicsTE guide §4.8, §8.1

The sound library

Every sample — factory, recorded or transferred — sits in a numbered slot from 1 to 999. A pad just points at a slot, so the same sample can be on many pads and in many projects without using extra memory. The library holds 999 samples or 128 MB, whichever fills first.

Factory sound ranges

Slots	Sounds
1–99	Kicks
100–199	Snares
200–299	Hi-hats
300–399	Percussion
400–499	Bass
500–599	Melodic sounds

How the library behaves

New recordings go into the next free slot automatically. To pick the slot yourself, see Choosing where a sample is stored.
Sound edits (pitch, trim, envelope…) belong to the pad in that project — the sample itself is untouched unless you crop it (Trim and crop).
Samples only have names if they came in through the EP sample tool or were renamed there.
Deleting a sample removes it from every project that uses it — Deleting samples.

3.4BasicsTE guide §6.1, §8.3

Commit

Commit is the K.O. II’s way of saying “keep this, now let me try something”. It stores the current combination of patterns as a scene and moves you into a duplicate of it. The music keeps playing, and the scene you just left stays exactly as it was.

Key combinations

SHIFT + MAIN: Commits the current scene and continues in a copy of it.

Ways to use it

Commit after each layer you record. You end up with intro, build and full beat as separate scenes.
Commit before punching in new sounds, so the old version is one scene away.
Commit, then switch some groups to new patterns to make a breakdown or a variation.
Chain the committed scenes in Song mode to arrange the track.

From the community

Keep a “home” scene: commit to make a copy, mangle the copy as much as you like, then jump back to the untouched original. via Elektronauts: EP-133 Tips and Tricks