“The first take is ‘the take’… if you keep it on a loop, you get unlimited options which blocks your process”: Jungle’s J Lloyd on keeping creativity free and imperfectJungle’s J Lloyd has shared how he avoids over-producing and keeps the freedom of creativity present within their music.
Opening up the original multitrack session for Back On 74, Jungle’s massive hit from their fourth album, 2023’s Volcano, Lloyd shares a recording of the acoustic guitar for the track, which has a mistake in it. Explaining why the mistake is there, Lloyd shares that the recording is the very first take of the guitar part being played, and that the first take should also be your final in order to keep natural creativity running through a track.

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In a teaser video for his Mix With The Masters documentary on YouTube, Lloyd shares, “Something I learned a while back [is] the first take is the take, it’s the bit where you’re just reacting to it. If you keep it on loop and do 30,000 takes or 30 guitar takes you just end up with unlimited options which again just blocks the process because then you have to go into this editing thing…
“It’s the creation part of it, and then the editor – and these are two very separate roles. A lot of the creative is very free, it’s not thinking about it, it’s just feeling it, and you want to stay there. As soon as you go to the edit, you’ve got to be careful with software because it tries to pull you into being an editor very quickly,” he says.
“If you’re writing in a DAW, you’ve got to be very aware of not being drawn into being the editor because if you get drawn into being the editor, it’s a different mindset, and that mindset will essentially make you quite critical of things, and if you’re critical of things you’ll shut down ideas.”
You can watch the clip below:

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