SYNTHESIZE is a generic functions used to call adequate synthesis functions for various kinds of OM objects. It is used in the OMChroma and OM-Chant libraries.
The :run argument determines whether you want to synthesize the sound, or just get the params generated for synthesis:
If this is NIL and you are in Csound synthesis process (in OMChroma), synthesize will return the pathnames of the generated .orc and .sco files, instead of the pathname of the synthesized file. If you are running Chant synthesis in OM-Chant, synthesize will return the pathname to the synthesis-control SDIF file.
T is the more usual case (return a synthesized sound) but NIL can be useful for debugging your patch, by viewing what is the resulting control data. It can also be useful if you want to delay or defer the synthesis process and keep (or archive) the CSound/Chant control files.
:patch is used only in OM-Chant. It is used to determine which Chant “patch” (= configuration of the synthesizer) you want to use. In general the Chant synthesis is able to determine this automatically given the type of input data, but you might want to explicit or force a different patch in some cases.
See also: http://support.ircam.fr/docs/om-libraries/om-chant/co/Intro.html
Jean
ps. you should probably start a new discussion thread about this. The group admins should be able to do it from here using the “Split” command.