Recently I took the band I was producing, Elevenpoint, up to St. Louis to record drum tracks at Music Creek Studios. We had basically budgeted 2 days of recording and our goal was to get 11 songs with great drums on all of those. We realize that this is much faster than many major label bands, but also enough time to track drums for a kick ass record. Under the circumstances here are a few tips I learned.

Things will go smoother if you have great communication with the engineer and studio. This may seam obvious, but it really wasn't. I had communicated with the engineer several times and we pretty much knew what we were doing, but I had never gotten ahold of the studio. I wish I would have. There were a few issues that weren't a big deal, but things could have been a tad easier if I would have known. We headed up to St. Louis and we had no idea what the address was for Music Creek Studios. We had rough directions, but we really didn't know where we were going. There were other issues that it would have been nice to pass along to the band ahead of time. Nothing big, I could avoided a few stressful situations by calling up ahead of time and talking to the studio.

Make Sure The Band Knows That You Will Be Taking Breaks. It's natural for the band to be excited and on the edge about recording in a big studio for the first time. With that ?edge? also comes a sizable bill. This sort of creates a tug of war between taking your time and getting the drums right and trying to save money. As the producer (and not paying the bill) I wasn't too concerned with the money part of it. My job is to make a kick ass record. We'll take the time we need. (Obviously I have to balance between that and putting the band members into bankruptcy). It turns out that the studio is place of intense creativity, but also very taxing decisions. Listening critically to the timing of drum tracks can be fatiguing. It's easy to get burned out . So we were taking breaks after every single song. I had to explain to the band that it was necessary to take these breaks to ensure that we were thinking with a clear head. For some reason this was more obvious when we were hung over the next day!

Hold back on too much fun. There is a tough balance to strike as a producer. I was running the show in some ways. If the band was too drunk or staying up too late, it was my ass. I had two days to get the drum tracks that I needed so we couldn't mess around. Having said that though, there is no way that 5 guys can't take a trip 2-3 hours from home, stay in a hotel and not get into some trouble. While I'm sure the tracks turned out fine, it was apparent that we were pushing the limit by our second day of recording. I wondered if maybe I had drank a little too much the night before because I was having trouble focusing on the task at hand. Make sure your band is having fun both in the studio and outside of the studio, just don't let them or you get out of hand.

Plan Ahead On Backing Up The Files. You can never be too prepared when it comes to protecting your recorded tracks in a big studio. Obviously the transport from the big studio to your studio is a scary situation, so you need to be aware of that. I backed the files to 4 different hard drives and a data DVD just to be safe. I recommend that you do the same.

Make sure the band has their guitars and basses setup properly. After spending time in preproduction with the band playing live together, it was a shock being able to clearly hear everything in a studio control room. Out of tune instruments with poor intonation are blatantly obvious and distracting. Get it taken care of ahead of time.

Here are a few other tips:

• As producer, it's your job to keep the band playing their best, so don't slam the bass players head into the hard hotel floor when wrestling on the bed. (I seriously thought I hurt the guy).

• If the band gives you the beer, you drink it. It's important to bond with the guys and be a part of the family. I took this producing trip very seriously and hadn't planned on drinking much, but that was shot down before we even left.

• If you have some ridiculous need to sleep on the floor in hotels, just keep in mind that you may feel like shit the next day and that could effect your performance as a producer.

• Bands smoke a ton of cigarettes. Fair warning. I've been home for 15 hours and I still feel the smoke in my nose.

• I was worried about being crazy enough to pump the band up and keep them from thinking too much. It turns out that it wasn't a problem.

• Understand that there is reverse synergy when it comes to band intelligence. This means that if you add the up the intelligence of the entire band, it's MUCH lower than if you added up their individual intelligence scores. This is what leads to people pissing on toilets (and not in them), tearing open coffee bags and throwing them throughout the hotel, doing naughty things with females in the bathroom, etc. In other words, don't expect your band to be respectable human beings when they are doing a serious record.

• Avoid foods that cause farting. It sounds stupid but this can seriously ruin a session....or make it.

• Red Bull is required. I had never had it before. After drinking like 6 of them in one day, it's clear that I'll be drinking more of them sometime soon.

• Take care of your engineers if they do a good job. I gave our engineer Ziggy Stull a nice bonus out of my own pocket for doing a job well done. Good engineers are not easy to come by and they are terribly underpaid. Take care of them if they take care of you.