There's a great Tambourine in Jamstix.They usually don't sound that good but this one does.

For the multi-voice harmonies Reaper lets you set a loop marker for a section and record as many takes as you like on top of each other(Over-dubbing) so insteand of using 5 tracks I just used one stereo track with 5 takes layered on top of each other.Of course you have to get them right as you can't edit them too much once layered up so may go back and re-do but then sometimes in multiple harmonies a few slight picth variations actually differentiate the voices if they aren't too noticible.

  I then wanted a staggered vocal chorus effect after the main backing chorus so I duplicated the track and chopped and moved those same 5 voice block to the time points I liked.The tracks are treated through a reverb track/buss with compression and EQ to smooth them out and the main vocal routed through the same FX track to,"Glue" the sound together so there's no clashing tails from different reverbs but the main vocal also has a very subtle amount of ping-pong delay on it.The snares and toms/cymbals are put through that FX track as well for the same reason.I do this quite often as it allows you to set the amount of the FX track in Reaper for each routed track rather than have a Reverb on the Master where it would be the same for all tracks.AFAIK this is a common,"Pro" technique to use a single FX track to,"Glue" the intruments through one reverb.

It depends on the material because on some songs you want the different sound of say a plate reverb on a Podfarm guitar sound and a dfiferent verb on the drums as it's own ambient sound but with multiple vocal parts the above,"Glueing" is the way to go help get the vocals to sit nicely in the mix along with of course proper compression and EQ.

      Conversely on a Rockabilly type track you most likely want a slap-back vocal but a some ambient reverb on the drums so glueing doesn't work unless you want a,"Live" feel and then you can run it through a good algo verb or an Impulse verb of the room you want the whole sound in.

People forget that there are some,"Ambience" conventions that we as listeners are used to.You would never hear a,"Torch" ballad that as only a little reverb on it.They are usually a big sounding verby production but ,"Punk" songs are usually pretty dry and tight,small room if anything.

     One of the problems with doing original songs that I've found is trying to come up with the ambience that suits the song as a lot of my songs,like yours,are originals so there's no real template for them so it just has to be musical decisions for better or worse drawing on experience and what,"I" like it to sound like.

As home recordists/song writers once we have the song we have to be

Tracking engineers(Get a good recording with no noise on analogue instruments and NO over recording in digital)

Mixing engineers.

Producers

Arrangers

Mastering engineers.

When put like this we can see just how hard it can be to get a decent end result as each one of the above has to be learnt and even practised.The advantages of being at home though mean we are not,"On-The-Clock" which was always a pressure thing when I did record in real studios and was paying for it and we are in a comfortable environment.