This page is read from MIDI Instrument Definitions, a Python library used in the author's other projects, in which every number is traced to a document its maker published. Its source is on GitHub.

Teenage engineering EP–133 K.O. II MIDI implementation

The MIDI implementation of the teenage engineering EP–133 K.O. II: what it answers to, and the 6 controls it offers, on firmware 2.5.

At a glance

Firmware

This page describes firmware 2.5.

MIDI channel

Any one of 1 to 16.

MIDI mode

1: omni on, poly.

Voices

Not recorded.

Notes

Each note plays a drum of its own, listed below.

Note range

0 to 127: C-1 to G9, counting middle C as C4.

Velocity

Sent and received. Release velocity is ignored.

Aftertouch

None, sent or answered.

Pitch bend

Not recorded.

Program change

Received and sent, with 999 presets.

MIDI clock

Sent and received.

Start and stop

Sent and received.

Control change

6 controls, in the tables below.

NRPN

None.

System exclusive

Supported.

Drum notes

Each drum plays from the note beside it.

Controls

In the order the definition gives them, by group. Under each control is the name a program calls it by, once pymidiinstrumentdefs.load("teenage_engineering/ep_133_ko_ii") has loaded them.

Controllers

Without a group

Where these facts come from

Source documents

• EP–133 guide, 14. system, ver 2.5, its user manual, read on 3 October 2026 (the file read).
• EP–133 guide, 8. modes, ver 2.5, its user manual, read on 3 October 2026 (the file read).
• EP–133 guide, 12. how to, ver 2.5, its user manual, read on 3 October 2026 (the file read).
• downloads - teenage engineering, its download page, read on 3 October 2026 (the file read).

How they were read

User guide ver 2.5, published as a web site of eighteen numbered chapters rather than as a document, each chapter its own page: chapter 14 system carries all three MIDI tables - 14.1 the implementation chart, 14.2 the note map and 14.5 the CC map - and the numbered system settings behind them. Plus chapter 1 for the sockets, chapter 8 for the sound modes and the per-pad MIDI page, chapter 12 for driving it from a keyboard and sequencing out of it, and chapter 16 for the specification. The maker's downloads page gives the operating system version, which the guide does not.

FOUR CONTROLLERS, AND THE GUIDE SAYS THAT IS ALL OF THEM: "below is a list of all the parameters that can be adjusted with midi control changes" (system). They are vibrato, the two effect knobs and a sustain pedal. The implementation chart adds two numbers that list does not - CC 0 and CC 32, bank select, ticked in both directions - and those are controls too, as bank select is wherever a maker numbers it. So neither table alone gives the instrument's controller numbers, and 14.5's claim to be a complete list is false by two.

THE CC MAP GIVES EVERY RANGE AS 1-127 AND THAT IS WORTH DOUBTING RATHER THAN BELIEVING. All four rows read the same, including the sustain pedal, which is conventionally a switch at 0 and 127 - and the implementation chart writes program change's range as "(0-127)" on the same page. A column with one value repeated four times, disagreeing with the neighbouring table's convention, reads like a template rather than four measurements. It is recorded as printed because that is what the document says, and this paragraph is the doubt.

ONE CONTROLLER HAS TWO NAMES IN TWO TABLES. The chart's notes column calls CC 1 "mod wheel" and the CC map calls it "vibrato". One controller, named twice; the CC map's name is kept below, because that is the table whose job is to name them.

FORTY-EIGHT PADS ON FOUR GROUPS, TOLD APART BY NOTE AND NOT BY CHANNEL. The note map gives twelve pads on each of groups a to d, over notes 36 to 83 unbroken, and the chart's note rows agree range for range. The pads are labelled as the numeric keypad they are - ., 0, enter, then 1 to 9 - so the lowest note of a group is the . pad and pad 1 is the fourth note, not the first. A reader who assumes note 36 is pad 1 is three semitones out for every pad on the instrument.

EACH PAD CAN ALSO BE GIVEN A MIDI CHANNEL OF ITS OWN, which the format cannot hold beside a voice map and which matters to anybody driving this: "the (knobX) knob controls the MIDI channel the pad receives and sends to. this allows you to connect a series of external music devices and send note data to them all individually from different pads!" (modes). There is a system setting for working that way throughout - "only send midi if midi channel assigned in sound edit" (system). So the default arrangement is one channel with notes telling the pads apart, and a player may instead give pads their own channels. The guide never says what happens when a pad's channel and the global one disagree.

NO VOICE COUNT IS PUBLISHED, and the chart declines to give one: its true voice row is a dash in both columns. Two sentences show the pool is finite without numbering it - a pad set to sound 000 "can hold midi without stealing any voices" (how_to), and the sustain pedal is "for key and legato voices" (system) - and a sound's own play mode decides whether it is polyphonic at all: "key is polyphonic, and allows you to play multiples of the same sample at once" (modes) against oneshot and legato, which are not.

THE GUIDE HAS NO CHAPTER 13. Its chapters run 1 to 12 and then 14 to 18, the chapter-to-chapter navigation steps straight across the gap, and no page carries a 13.x section or a chapter 13 anywhere. The sibling EP-1320's guide skips 13 too, at a different position. Recorded because a reader counting chapters to find the MIDI one will be out by one, and because this guide carries other evidence of renumbering: the MIDI chapter's own anchors still point at the numbers its sections had before the note map existed.