Been in studios loads of times - the BEST advice I can give besides knowing your parts well enough to play in your sleep is:
- record the giuiar parts at home to a click in a sequencer - burn them down to a cd individually as wav files (mono). Make sure they are all exactly the correct length and start at exactly the right time (easy mistake to make).
Bring the disk to the studio and get the engineer to import them to ProTools or Nuendo and use them as your scratch tracks. This will save a lot of time.
- Have the drummer listen to the backing tracks (from your cd) prior to going to the studio. Make sure he listens to them and knows exactly how things should be so when he sits down with it on his headphones he can record straight away.
- When you get the drums down first and in perfect time, then add the bass, then rhythm guitars, accents and harmonies, then the lead, then the vocals. When the drums are down you can use the scratch gutiar stracks as a reference (either play along with them or refer back if you lose your place)
- The best way to get things right is for everone to play their parts individually - this way there is less of a chance of mistakes being made and you can do multiple drop-ins if needed to get a parts right (drums included)
- Make sure you stick to the schedule the engineer advises otherwise you will have no time left at the end to do a proper mix.
- Also very important to bring a cd along that is as close to the sound you want as possible so the engineer knows what to aim for (this will change of course but will get things kick started eg the Black album by Metallica or whatever).
- Have all guitars strung up with new strings and pre-stretched for at least 3 days before going in (otherwise you willwast a lot of time tuning up). Have your amp settings written down and photographed before going in so you don't get messed up - then photograph the amp and mic placements in the studio along with the final amp settings in case you go back another time and want to get the same sound. Also bring a notebook and jot down the basic EQ settings and effects that engineer uses to achieve the various tones (eg Eventide Eclypse preset 200 'Dersert Wave' for the lead guitar).
Hope that helps, there's loads more but if you stick with the above you should be able to get down to business pretty quickly. How many tracks you recording and how long is the session? Is the track complicated or simple? Can you all play it from the top without making any mistakes?