I actually am a member of a microkorg group on yahoogroups where we discuss this sort of thing, so you could always come check us out there, but I can answer a few of your questions right away...
The Korg Microkorg is what the call a virtual analog synthesizer/vocoder which means its basically a compacted version of an analog synthesizer which uses 'solid-state' elements to replicate an analog synth without actually having all of the components represented seperately...
so If you remember seeing pictures of synths that were big walls of knobs with instrument cords going all over like an old phone operator station, you can think of the MK as that, but digitally represented with 'virtual' instrument cables you can hook up in different ways to various 'virtual' modules...
So a good place to start would be learning the various elements of synthesizers and what the different modules do and how they are usually linked up...
The MK comes with lots of pre-designed sounds you can switch between by pushing the big white buttons 1-8, twisting the big knob that says trance, electro, retro, etc. and pushing the A-B button...
each style (trance) has two banks (A and B) of 8 different presets (the buttons 1-8)...
as Im sure you know, any sound can be shifted up or down octaves with the octave up/down keys...
the row of knobs on the upper right are your realtime control knobs for manipulating the various modules on the synth... when you first go to a sound they effect cuttoff, resonance, etc (written above the knobs) but by turning the two middle (edit select) knobs with osc1, filter, amp... and patch1, patch2 etc... you can switch between the various modules of the synth (it lets you chose the box you want to mess with) the knobs in the upper right then effect whichever perameter is written below them (in the big grid thingy) depending on which module you have chosen with the edit select knobs (the two in the middle osc, filter, etc..)
the cool thing is you can switch between modules and turn various knob settings while playing...
messing with cutoff and resonance for instance is very fun... you can use the pitch wheel and mod wheel too...
whichever sounds you make can be saved in one of the slots that the standard sounds sit in if you want... but to do that you have to turn write protection off... hit shift and the eight button then turn the first knob (top right) to say off...
then you can save by hitting write then the key (1-8) you want to save it under and then write again... it will save for a second then go back to play mode...
thats important because switching between saved sounds after tweaking something erases whatever youve done and goes back to standard...
only by saving can you keep your settings...
Also, to learn what different things do, you'll need to know how to initialise a track - which means setting everything to zero and starting with just a basic wave... Hold shift and press the 3 key to initialise... press again to execute... you chose your soundwave shape under the 'osc' (oscilator) settings... which you then can layer with a second oscilator, filter with the filter, amplify with the amp, and output...
patches are like effects where you use the first knob to select the controler and the second to select what it controls... like using one of your LFOs to control pitch gives you a vibrato... etc...
you can put four of these on at a time if you like and save them...
you use the upper right buttons to control each thing, but they only begin to work when you hit the current value... so if you touch knob 3 and it says "0" and your twisting does nothing, you have to turn the knob all the way down to the zero, in that case, to then effect it...
by doing that you can touch the knobs to read what their current setting is without changing it right away... also the red LED will light up when you are on the 'original value' of that knob (before you started messing with it) which is the only way to undo your stuff if you dont want to switch preset sounds and start at the stock recorded sound again...
As for loading a program onto it...
you can use 'midi in' to run its sounds with something else, like a sequencer, and 'midi out' to control a different midi thing with its keyboard, but you cant load patterns on it and play them... it doesnt have an onboard sequencer... if you had something else to run with it tho, you could split the keys and trigger samples and things with it... but the MK would just be a controller for running that thing's program... not doing it itsself...
The closest it gets is the arpeggiator which you can turn on and off, and mess with by turning the edit select knob 2 to arpeggiator...
the two arpeggiator slots just control different aspects of the same single arpeggiator tho... there is only one arpegiator... but by tweaking those two you can change the pattern, the octave range, you can even use the bank buttons (1-8) to insert mutes into the patte