I thought the section on using gain automation was interesting, I had never actually heard of doing that before.

I always do volume automation, but his argument about controlling the level of the vocal before it hits the compressor makes sense. I'm going to look into how to do that with reaper.

As far as compiling a vocal from multiple vocal tracks, that's not going to happen! Seems it would suck the soul right out of the performance. Might be ok for pop, not going to work for blues.