The Beginner's Guide to Adobe After Effects vs Fundamentals of Music Theory

The course spans 34 video lessons across approximately 5 hours, covering After Effects fundamentals including panels and workspaces, keyframe animation, precomposing, masking, text work, looping animations, and video export. Multiple reviewers praised the "why not just the what" approach — Jake explains the reasoning behind every setting rather than dictating values to copy. One reviewer who completed the Taco Tuesday arcade project noted it gave a clear grip on the basics and strong workflow tips. The main limitation is that the course only covers Skillshare-hosted content and does not update as frequently as After Effects itself evolves.

Jake Bartlett is consistently described as one of the best After Effects educators online — a Denver-based motion designer with over 16 years of professional experience since 2010 and 30+ courses reaching 325,000+ students. Reviewers across independent blogs, his own website testimonials, and the School of Motion interview converge on the same qualities: he eliminates filler, explains principles rather than recipes, and makes complex animation concepts digestible for any skill level. Students from complete beginners to working professionals report learning something new in every lesson.

The course is included in a Skillshare subscription at approximately $13.99/month billed annually — one of the most affordable entry points into structured After Effects education. The subscription unlocks Jake's entire catalog of 30+ courses (Animating With Ease, Shape Layers, Kinetic Type, 3D in After Effects, and more), multiplying the value considerably. Independent reviewers note the annual plan makes Skillshare "incredible value for money" for beginner-to-intermediate creative content, though the subscription model means access ends if you cancel, unlike one-time Udemy purchases.

Jake monitors a Community discussion tab where students can post questions and he responds, and he runs live portfolio review workshops on Skillshare for direct feedback. However, multiple platform-level reviews note that peer feedback on student project submissions is inconsistent — many projects receive no critique. The Skillshare model lacks the structured cohort and Discord community offered by Jake's paid standalone "Launch Into After Effects" course, which includes a private Discord and personal feedback loops.

The Taco Tuesday arcade animation project produces a portfolio-worthy animation covering keyframe timing, precomposing, masking, parenting, and video export — all transferable to real motion design work. Reviewers note that the skills taught match industry workflows, and Jake's professional background ensures techniques reflect actual production practices. One reviewer specifically called out precomposing as a major takeaway that they hadn't properly understood from other resources. The course stops short of intermediate topics like expressions, 3D, and motion paths, which require Jake's follow-on Skillshare courses to continue.

Six modules take you from pitches, scales and modes through intervals, clefs, rhythm and form into two full weeks of functional harmony and a harmonic-analysis final. Revised in 2022. Reviewers consistently praise the clarity and the bite-sized video chunks. Capped because the taught material is thin relative to the difficulty of the quizzes in the later weeks.

Five University of Edinburgh academics — Dr Thomas Butler, Dr John Kitchen MBE, Dr Zack Moir and colleagues — deliver genuinely academic, well-paced lectures. The teaching is the most consistently praised element across the corpus. The variety of voices keeps it fresh, though it makes the level of assumed knowledge uneven from week to week.

Free to audit in full; a certificate is ~$49 (or ~£35) and is included in a Coursera Plus subscription with financial aid available. For a six-module university-grade music-theory course with an open-access companion e-book, the free-audit route is hard to beat on price.

Assessment is quiz- and exam-based rather than creative-project-based — weekly graded quizzes plus a harmonic-analysis final. Good for testing recall and analysis, but there is no composition portfolio or peer-reviewed creative artefact. The exams are the most divisive element, with several learners flagging notation and clef demands that exceed the taught content.

The notation, harmony and analysis skills transfer directly to reading scores, arranging, songwriting and further academic study — Edinburgh positions it as a foundation for musicology, composition and performance. Limit is that it is Western-notation theory, not ear training, production or instrument technique, so it is one pillar of musicianship rather than all of it.