Apparently Greg's used a hair-tie as a dampener ever since Jason Becker showed him how to use one to clean up tricky parts while recording when he produced the second Howe II album. It's ended up being an integral part of his approach, as a lot of the legato and tapping techniques he uses now require the dampener to get them really clean.
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I hate to be an ass, but especially today, shouldn't most of what he's doing that's supposedly special be common sense?
(Especially) after the advent of two handed tapping, using your left hand to open on a new string in a legato manner just makes sense. The same goes for hybrid picking for anyone who has ever had any experience with classical guitar, at all.
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Usually yes, but it's amazing how many people still haven't picked up on this stuff. I don't think Greg's really claiming what he's doing is particularly revolutionary (he almost always mentions Firkins, Garsed and Kotzen as the guys he picked up the hybrid picking approach from when it comes up in interviews); it's just a way of making certain licks sound a lot more fluid.
I've always changed strings with hammer-ons, almost since I started playing, just because, like you said, it seemed like common sense, but Greg often comes up with some new ways of using it to get around the fretboard that I probably wouldn't have thought of. It's just little bits of technical sleight-of-hand that I find really useful.
Scott Mishoe has a lot of really amazing ideas in this vein as well, but he seems to have dropped off the face of the earth recently.