Teaching & Talks
Pascale and Éric Perruchot teach together at Sciences Po Paris and Institut Lyfe in Lyon (formerly Institut Paul Bocuse). They also share their practice with professionals, and at conferences, roundtables and public events.
Passing it on, together
Why we teach
We chose to teach because sharing experience brings a different responsibility: tracing the reasoning behind it, making that reasoning clear to others and leaving it open to question. A decision may draw on years of listening, an intimate knowledge of repertoire, conversations with a brand, and close observation of a place and the people who live or work in it. Passing it on means returning to the path that led to the choice and giving others the means to retrace, test and make sense of that path for themselves.
Teaching side by side
Faced with the same piece of music, the same brand or the same situation, we may give different weight to different dimensions of what we see and hear. Those readings challenge and refine one another through exchange. Learners can watch a line of thought take shape, follow its reasoning, question it and put forward a reading of their own.
That exchange is central to how we teach. It extends the way we make decisions at Music Eye View, and the experience of building a creative company together, with teams, through situations, countries and encounters that have continually broadened the way we understand our practice.
Three ways to share
Today, that commitment takes three forms: higher education, professional development and public talks. Each creates a different space for sharing the same practice: starting from real situations, questioning choices and making the reasoning behind them something others can use.
Higher education
At Sciences Po Paris and Institut Lyfe, teaching moves from sensory experience to analysis, then from analysis to decision-making.
At Sciences Po, we explore how music can contribute to the way a brand is expressed and recognised. Values, positioning or intention move beyond words to become criteria for choice, then a coherent sonic expression that can be articulated, documented and governed.
At Institut Lyfe, hospitality and F&B provide a particularly concrete setting for a wider enquiry into service, how people are received and the experience that surrounds them. A brand is expressed through relationships, the ways people use a place, and the moments that shape it. Music allows us to examine how an intention becomes perceptible and how coherence can be sustained as situations change.
Professional development
With professionals, we start from their experience, their responsibilities and the decisions they actually have to make. The discussion begins with what a brand wants people to recognise, the values or messages it wants to make perceptible, and the experience it wants to create. Music turns those intentions into criteria, choices and coherent expressions.
It also means distinguishing preference, curation, programming, identity and governance, then relating decisions to the people they are intended for. People in different roles can approach the same question from their own responsibilities while building a common language for deciding together.
The content and depth are adapted to the participants, their organisation and the situations they want to explore.
Public talks
A conference, round table or study day creates a different rhythm for sharing the work. We choose a question precise enough to open up the subject: what makes a musical choice right for a situation, the place of taste in a professional decision, the role of curation, the relationship between music and brand identity, or the way a place changes what we hear.
The format changes; the standard remains the same: a line of thought that people can take back to their own experience.
Experience and exchange
Paths that keep moving
Our teaching grows out of practice shaped by real situations and still evolving through them.
Our paths took us from media and television into the study of digital change, then to founding Music Eye View in 2012. Asia was where that thinking first met practice; other countries, cultures, brands and uses followed. With each project, the questions became sharper, and so did the way we approached them.
Building in different contexts
Entrepreneurship is part of that experience too. Building a creative company means holding conviction and reality together, making decisions with incomplete information, understanding what a client is actually trying to solve, bringing different personalities and skills into a shared direction, and holding that direction while allowing it to evolve.
We share that experience because it raises questions learners will face in their own future roles: how does an intuition become a project? How do different ways of thinking meet in a decision? How are values translated into criteria that can guide action? How do you understand a context that is not your own? How does a decision remain intelligible as it moves from one person to a team, then from a team into an organisation?
Working across cultures
This experience has also been shaped by clients and audiences whose cultures, references, habits and relationships with music can differ profoundly.
Music has a remarkable ability to travel across cultures; it is never heard outside them.
That dual reality runs through our practice: understanding the people we are addressing, their particular references and context, while working with a musical language that can travel beyond those differences. Music's capacity to cross cultural boundaries makes close attention to the person listening all the more necessary.
Practice and teaching
Start with a real situation
Music Eye View projects bring real decisions into the classroom: decisions made in context, under constraints, for particular people and purposes.
We revisit cases with their context, constraints, the people the music was addressing, the intentions expressed by the brand and the choices that gradually took shape. Learners can trace a decision, examine its reasoning, then build their own reading.
Analyse & decide
They choose, argue their case, test their criteria against the situation and prepare a presentation for the client. The exercise is close to what many of them will later be asked to do in managerial or decision-making roles: understand complexity, identify what matters, build a recommendation, take responsibility for a judgement and make its reasoning clear to others.
For a future marketing lead, brand manager, service professional or senior decision-maker, music becomes a concrete field in which to test a wider question: how does an intention become perceptible, then a decision structured enough to be shared, implemented and governed?
Client presentation
A decision becomes something others can carry forward when its reasoning can be named, discussed and presented.
Our two voices matter here. Learners have seen that the same situation can support more than one reading, and that a first answer gains precision when it is open to questioning. They have the same space to build and defend a position of their own.
Projects give teaching its material; learners put that material to work again through different references and questions. Teaching therefore becomes part of how our practice develops: we share what we have learned, expose our decisions to discussion and remain open to what we still have to learn.
Listen, understand, choose
Listening
Music is particularly fertile ground for testing what we think we already know.
We often begin by listening.
A blind listening exercise might ask what emotion a piece evokes, which style or musical tradition it seems to belong to, what catches the ear or creates a sense of familiarity. Several people hear the same piece; their responses reveal different sensibilities, references and perceptions.
Theory
Theory then helps illuminate what has just been experienced. Sound is physical: variations in pressure travel through air and become perception. Music also engages emotion, memory, association and movement. Its conative dimension is immediately apparent when a rhythm sets the body in motion or a piece makes us want to dance.
Depending on what emerges through listening, we may draw on acoustics, cognitive science, psychology, sociology, musical culture and theory, or marketing. These fields provide reference points, sharpen vocabulary and help separate elements that first arrived as a single sensory impression.
Theory serves practice: to listen more closely, name more precisely and choose more clearly.
Curation
To curate is to enter a vast repertoire with a direction precise enough to know what you are looking for, while leaving room for discovery to move the search. Every piece we listen to raises the same questions: what place could it take, for which people, in what situation, at what moment, and for what reason?
Taste is part of listening; criteria connect it to something beyond ourselves.
A piece has its own history, form, energy, density, voice and rhythm. A place has its own rhythms, densities and histories. The brand carries an intention, values, positioning, and sometimes messages it wants to make perceptible beyond words. The people present bring their sensibilities, habits and cultures, the reason they are there and the time they will spend in the place.
Congruence
Curation becomes meaningful when these realities are considered together.
This is where congruence matters. A piece finds its place when it forms a coherent relationship with what the brand wants to express, what is actually happening in the place, the moment in which it will be heard and the people it is addressing.
The listener remains at the centre of that relationship.
Who are we trying to reach? What have they come here to experience? How will they hear this piece in this particular context? What does the brand want them to perceive about it? What kind of musical presence can support that relationship and still feel right?
Governance
As those questions become more precise, the choices begin to form a language. A sound identity emerges when an intention is clear enough to generate different expressions while remaining recognisable.
Like guidelines for a visual identity, a sound identity guide gives that identity a grammar and a memory. Governance then interprets that grammar, makes decisions in new situations and allows the sonic expression to evolve while retaining coherence.
Frequently asked questions
Where do Pascale and Éric teach?
Pascale and Éric Perruchot teach together at Sciences Po Paris and Institut Lyfe in Lyon (formerly Institut Paul Bocuse).
Does Music Eye View design programmes for professionals?
Yes. The content, scope and depth are defined around the participants, their professional environment and the situations they want to explore.
Which languages do you teach in?
Teaching, professional development and public talks can be offered in French, English or German.