You have finally perfected all your songs. You are now ready to go into the studio and record them. You found a studio you like, you like the engineer the budget works for both of you and you are ready to book a start date. You have everything checked off. You have the songs you are doing well rehearsed. You have the vocal harmonies worked out, you have the tempo of each song. You are forgetting one major thing most artists/bands forget, the reference songs. What are reference songs? Well, I have had a lot of bands come in to the studio after meeting me and hearing my work. So, they book a start date. Now it is time to record. Maybe the band is using their own gear, maybe they are using the studios gear. Or a combination or both. But wait… did everyone discuss what the band wanted the final product to sound like first? Maybe they just vaguely said “like something on the radio” or “huge sounding.” These types of terms are very ambiguous and can have very different meanings depending on the person.
Better than just using words to describe your music give actual examples. This could be I want the guitars to sound like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day. Or I want the drums to sound like “xxx.” This will give the engineer a much better idea of what you are after versus just saying I want the bass to sound “more like a bass” or I want the guitars to sound “mean.” Reference tracks are clear examples of exactly what you want for your music. These examples are very helpful to any studio you will be recording at. It is a good idea to have a few different examples of what you want. Maybe you want the entire music (bass, drums, guitar) to sound like “song x”, you want the vocals to sound like “song y” etc. The other thing these reference tracks do is give the engineer an example of what the mix should sound like. You can have completely different tracks for this if you want. It is usually good to have about 3 different similar sounding bands you really like and about 2 songs from each band to give the engineer as reference for mixing.
All these reference tracks should be given to the studio/engineer as soon as you can. Preferable 2-3 weeks before the scheduled start of recording to give the engineer a change to listed to them beforehand. Always pick high quality songs to give to the studio. If possible avoid using mp3 or low-quality tracks and get wave files if available.
Always be prepared for the studio in every way you can.