Sean Malone's work on pre-production for a new Cynic CD has led him to some interesting observations:

http://www.stick.com/news/cynic_new/

Nice article.

Interesting, and a little gratifying perhaps, to read his remarks regarding the direction his tapping technique has taken, concluding with, "...it's a matter of 'pressing' the strings versus 'striking' them."

It's not quite the same, but it highlights one of the aspects of tapping that I find myself devoting focused attention to in my practice time. Closer to the nut, tapping is easier to control, but as string/fret spacing gradually increases moving toward the bridge, it transitions toward a "two stages of contact" thing. Seems kinda like walking in fresh snow, where your foot hits the top surface and encounters resistance on the way down, but doesn't hit "bottom" until an instant later...the deeper the snow, the more different it feels from walking on a hard surface. I find that I'm more likely to "press" the strings as spacing increases moving toward the bridge to get dynamic control. (Yes, I have been paying attention to truss rod adjustments )

I noticed a few months ago, in one of Emmett's "how the Stick works" videos, that he did something I'd call 'pressing' on the strings as he was demo'ing dynamic control somewhere down past the 12th fret on the melody side. That made me feel a lot better, as does Sean's remark I quoted above. I wonder why I've found so little discussion about it in my perusing the archives both here and on the old Stickwire list, though.

Yes, this is interesting...
I think what Sean refers to as "pressing" I'd be tempted to call 'tap-and-hold' - for however brief a 'moment in time'... - ('happy pressing'?) - but this could be simply a matter of semantics and it seems to me that these are really quite subtle distinctions that we're talking about in any case, and everyone plays with a slightly different feel anyway, I guess, to an extent.
One thing that occurs to me when reading this, however, which it might perhaps be helpful to clarify to people with older instruments which have Rods, or Sticks with filed-down Rails (like mine) or to newer players, is the degree of lightness of finger-pressure that Sean talks of and which is also mentioned in the recent (excellent...) .pdf 'Tip Sheet' in the part entitled 'Finger Pressure.'
When I'm playing on my Rods or my filed Rails, my 'pressing' (or 'tapping-and-holding') means I make contact with the wood of the fingerboard - something which 'full' Rails doesn't seem to require, and which could actually be detrimental to technique and sound with those, I suspect, in a number of ways.
Any thoughts on this ?
(Either way, I totally agree that turning up the volume is much better than hitting the strings too hard, like it says in 'Free Hands', and as I discovered the hard way when I first started playing... )