First of all it starts with great songs. Coming into a session with material that you hope will turn into something magic rarely does. You want those songs to grab you in their rawest form. Then when the studio magic happens those songs can become masterpieces!
Next get with your producer for pre-production, work out arrangements, intro's and keys. Doing this will make the tracking day much more efficient.
Next choose the right sessions musicians for your genre. If you are using your own band work up arrangements, solo's ahead of time so that your time in the studio is creating, not learning.
Bring printed lyric sheets for the engineer and producer.
Do your best to budget enough studio time so that you are not trying to cram so much in that you take performances that are less than perfect because you are watching the clock. I know studio time can add up, but you are creating something that will last and be heard forever.
Once all of your music and vocals are recorded and you have squeezed everything you can out of your performances its time for the post work, vocal tuning and phrasing, editing, mix and finally mastering. I can't stress enough to make sure you budget enough time for the mix. To many times I have seen a client spend tons of money on tracking a project, adding orchestrations, stacking vocals and so on to only budget a day or two for the mix. Personally I recommend 3 days for a 10 to 12 song mix, plus a final fix day to tweak and make changes. This gives the mix engineer the time he needs to dig deeper into making sure you have a radio ready project that you will be proud of.
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