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I’ve recently starting playing around with chord progressions. They’re more fun to play when there is a drum track playing in the background. Right now I pick one of the default styles, deactivate everything except the drums (and on occasion percussion) and let that start as soon as I start playing.

It would handy to have a library of dedicated drum styles. Does such a thing exist? Or is there a way of creating them from midi drum tracks?

I, too, use the drum elements of available styles to play against in an exploratory way, as distinct from assembling recordings.
The '4-substyles' aspect of what the EK-50 offers in many cases seems to me less a route for smooth elaboration through a piece, than a collection of related beats. So there is certainly a lot of exploring to be done to find grooves that suit a personal inclination. The sometimes rather random naming of styles doesn't help.
So I think I'm agreeing with your general thrust - a thought-out proforma for quick noting of things you're likely to want to come back to is very useful in getting to know the EK-50, and this applies to other aspects as well - e.g. the actual sounds.

First, to do with tempo:
So far as I know, Korg do not publish any list of the styles by default BPM. But my limited experience is that the BPM value shown in the display may be initially a bit misleading.

For instance, one style I use regularly is 217 Bebop. That shows in the screen a default bpm of 103; but it feels a very busy, up-tempo style, as its name would suggest it should.
Cross-referencing it with another ap, I would suggest that in conventional terms (e.g. as you might find at the top of a lead sheet) it is actually more like 206 bpm.
I haven't repeated this check specifically with any other style, but it's worth bearing in mind when trying to choose a style.

Secondly, when playing with just the drums audible, I sometimes find it useful or interesting to scale the tempo. That is to say, if I'm basically playing at, say, 140 bpm, I can do this against a drum track at 70 b.p.m. or 280 b.p.m, as well as one at 140 b.p.m. (280 would not be possible on the EK-50, but you get the idea.)
So setting 217 Bebop to a nominal value in the range 52<>70 gives a sparser beat against which you can play at around 100<>140.

I have an iPad connected to my EK50, with both usb/midi and sound hooked up. So an alternative might be to use an app on the iPad for drums. All I need to figure out is if iPad apps can synchrostart with the melody played on the Korg. Anyone any experience with that?

Not quite sure what you have in mind here ? If you're playing live, you are doing the synchronising ?
So are you thinking of playing drums from your i;pad, and something else pre-recorded from the EK-50 ?

Sincerely
Ian G.

[quote="grahamid"]So are you thinking of playing drums from your i;pad, and something else pre-recorded from the EK-50?./quote]

The other way around: the ipad plays a fixed drum track and I play along on the Korg.
Well, that was the plan until I ran into a nicely priced MC-707 groovebox earlier this week. That may very well reduce my Korg to a career as a midi-keyboard.