Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep # 136 Nurturing Young Minds Through Rhythm and Movement: Miss Carly's Musical Journey
The magic of music starts early. Just ask Miss Carly, whose four-month-old students instinctively rock back and forth when her guitar begins to strum. That's the beauty of what she's created with Saddle River Song – music and movement classes where the youngest children discover their natural musical abilities.
As a classically trained clarinetist with degrees from Eastman School of Music and Columbia University's Teachers College, Miss Carly brings serious credentials to her playful approach. "I've always known I was put on this earth to encourage a lifelong love of music with others, specifically with children," she shares. Growing up with a jazz pianist father who fostered her musical passion, she's now passing that gift to a new generation throughout Bergen County.
The pandemic prompted her pivot from leading a Manhattan school's music department to creating Saddle River Song, filling a need she discovered through a mom's group that grew to 200 members seeking activities for their little ones. Her classes incorporate percussion instruments, movement, props like the beloved parachute, and always end with bubbles and dance parties. Beyond regular sessions, she offers themed holiday classes, birthday parties, and specially designed sensory-friendly classes for children on the autism spectrum.
For families who can't make it to in-person classes, Miss Carly created an innovative solution: "Miss Carly's Car Rides," a podcast combining music education with stories for children 18 months to 5 years old. This screen-free option transforms Bergen County traffic jams into educational opportunities, teaching active listening through engaging content.
Whether in Park Ridge, Fairlawn, Paramus, or through headphones during family drives, Miss Carly's approach centers on experiencing music before reading it – "the same way we learn language." As she explains, everyone has a heartbeat; we're all naturally musical. Join her classes and watch your child's innate musical abilities bloom. Subscribe at saddleriversong.com for weekly updates and exclusive discounts, or follow @SaddleRiverSong on Instagram to connect with this musical movement.
Saddle River Song
Miss Carly Bickoff
Fair Lawn, New Jersey, Fair Lawn, NJ, United States, New Jersey
(203) 837-7998
saddleriversong@gmail.com
saddleriversong.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey, good morning everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Bergen Neighbors. Well, it's the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by the Bergen Neighbors Media Group. Today we are joined by Miss Carly, who explained why she goes by that name of Saddle River Song. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, so glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, miss Carly, you are a musician, right? And Saddle River Song is all about bringing, I guess, the love of music to young people, right?
Speaker 3:Yes indeed, yes indeed. So I am Carly, otherwise known as Miss Carly to our little ones here in Bergen County, and I do own Saddle River Song and it's a music and movement business that offers grown up in me, you know, mommy and me style classes for babies, toddlers and kids here in the area.
Speaker 2:So when you say kids like, how old do they go?
Speaker 3:Great question. So some classes are geared towards, like the really little ones, like ages zero to two, Like sometimes I'll have you know itty bitties and then sometimes I'll have up to six or seven, even Um, but typically the six and seven year olds are there with a younger sibling. Uh yeah, I would say mostly two and three year olds. That's like my target age.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. So how did you like what's your journey? I mean, we talk about musical journeys all the time, but like, how did you get A to become a musician and B to start this business? Like why?
Speaker 3:I love answering this question because it's so simple and straightforward for me. I've always known that I was put on this earth to encourage a lifelong love of music with others, and specifically with children. My father is a jazz pianist. He fostered a very deep love of music within me from a young age and all throughout my childhood I knew I wanted to be a music teacher Like I've known nothing else you know since then.
Speaker 3:I went to undergraduate school for music performance and music education up at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, new York, and then I went to graduate school for music education at Columbia University's Teachers College. So I was like this is what I want to do and I don't want to age myself, but I've been doing this for about 20 years and I'm never going to do anything else. It's just, it's my life's passion, it's in my lifeblood, and I was in the school systems for a very long time. Most recently I was leading the lower school music department at Trevor Day School in Manhattan a wonderful, wonderful place and I never would have left. But the pandemic hit and, interestingly, music classes were very affected by it because all of a sudden there was no more singing, no more playing instruments, especially with mouthpieces where you're blowing air through an instrument, no more rehearsing together, performing together in groups.
Speaker 3:So between the pandemic and then getting pregnant with my first son in 2020, I kind of knew that the course of my career would take a turn and I wasn't exactly sure what kind of turn that would be. Career would take a turn and I wasn't exactly sure what kind of turn that would be, but I did know that I wasn't going to leave music education and I knew I would eventually return and you know it did. And when the time was right and the pandemic eased, I started Saddle River Song my own business, you know, knowing that I needed a bit more flexibility in my schedule as a parent, but, most importantly, because I saw a need in the area and you know there's plenty of music classes around, but there's always more and more young children whose parents want to see their kids love music and their lives to be enhanced by it. And so here we are.
Speaker 2:Wow, so um a little bit of commonality. I worked, I used to work, in the music industry.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:For Sony Music? Yeah, back in the 90s.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, Talking about dating yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, up until 2004, when Napster came around and kind of destroyed the music industry. But I play guitar. I don't consider myself a musician. I didn't go to college like you did. You're a musician.
Speaker 2:You're a musician, yeah didn't go to college like you did. You're a musician, yeah, and the more I watch these documentaries, like it all starts with a song, this great documentary on on prime about the nashville songwriting community, um, I realize, I realize, I guess I was a songwriter. I'm a songwriter, but you are, the point I'm getting to is I I worked part-time when I went to college in the city at two private schools Trinity School and Allen-Stevenson School.
Speaker 3:On the Upper East Side. I know both.
Speaker 2:I know both Totally different cultures between the Upper East Side and Upper West Side. Oh yes, the kids I dealt with on Allen-Stevenson were a little bit tougher than the laid-back parents I had on the Upper West Side.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yep, I was Upper West, they were artsy, the laid back parents I had on the Upper West Side, right. Yep, I was Upper West, so on the Upper West Side at Trinity we had some kind of music show and I wrote a song called Frankenstein that the kids actually danced to while I played it. So it was about how I lost my head. I forgot all these things. I felt just like Frankenstein. I had no mind.
Speaker 3:How do we hear this? I'd like to hear this you know what.
Speaker 2:Here's my biggest regret in life, because I've never recorded it. I've played it so many times and I did it back then and I should have had the guts to say you know what, let me see if I can get this copyrighted. And I did at one point go to people I knew at Sony Music and submitted some songs and I got turned down and had I had the tenacity that I have today in my new business career, I wouldn't have let one person's opinion you know kill my spirit, but I did.
Speaker 2:I let one person, one person say ah, there's no hook, where's the? Because I actually performed a song in the talent show at my university and I came in first place and it was a song called son of a beach. It was about the pollution great name on the beaches. This is before howard stern had his shows, son of a beach and um, it was kind of a parody and uh, by the third verse everybody was singing along with me and I came in first and that was recorded on video, but of course I've lost that VHS. So, but that I submitted to somebody at Sony publishing and they're like there's no hook and that was the end of that.
Speaker 3:Oh man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I want to go back. So when you study Eastman, so do you have to play piano? Do so, I want to go back. So when you study Eastman, so do you have to play piano? Do you get to choose an instrument, or do you have to learn to play a number of instruments? How does it work when you go to MA in music education.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course. So so for Eastman. So I double majored at Eastman BA in classical clarinet performance and and also in music education. So it's different depending on which school you go to, but I would say you do have to have a primary instrument that you go in studying, and then, in order to become a music teacher, you do need to be, you know, somewhat competent on either piano or guitar or something you can play along with you know that that you know where you're playing chords along with the kids.
Speaker 3:So yeah, so I did both. I was, you know, clarinet performance, but that's really, it's really tough to play clarinet, you know, in a grown up in me style class, because you can't speak at the same time. So, occasionally, you know, I'll, you know we'll do. Oh, you know, clarinet's instrument of the day, here it is and the kids love it, but I really mostly stick to guitar and ukulele so that I can sing and chat with the kids and their parents during class.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Having a dad who was into jazz. Were you a Benny Goodman? Benny.
Speaker 3:Goodman, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, and my dad really just you know, he didn't put the pressure on me, Like, of course I took piano lessons, and you know, weekly, from age five. Um, but it was more about you know. I just want you to share my passion of you know for music. I just want you to love it and he succeeded. I love it, and that's all that I want to share with everyone around me too Was Rhapsody in Blue your.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, that big clarinet solo at the beginning, oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:So what do you enjoy Now? You have a five-year-old of your own now, but what do you enjoy most about going? And I five-year-old of your own now, but what do you enjoy most about you know going and you know I've talked to a lot of people who had to pivot during COVID.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And a lot of them, you know, feel like. You know I could never go back to what I used to do, because where I am now is where I was meant to be Right.
Speaker 1:Do you feel?
Speaker 2:that and then like, where, like. So you live in Bergen County, I assume. So where did this? Did you feel that there was a need for this? Were people coming to you? Did you? Because you didn't? Have a child. Yet I mean, you just had, were, just you know, it wasn't like you had a kid in the school system and you thought, oh, this is something that it's lacking Like, where was that aha moment for you?
Speaker 3:That's a good question because, as I think I said before, the field I wouldn't say it's saturated, but there's definitely a lot of options. You know, especially in Bergen County, there are so many parent and me music classes that I think you know. I guess, backtracking a little bit, when I moved to Bergen County, you know, during the pandemic I, you know it was so isolating, I knew nobody. I had had my first kid and I started a mom's group on WhatsApp. That was, you know, had like five or six women in it and it was like the only way we could really hang out with each other, right with us and our babies. And it just kind of grew and grew slowly over time.
Speaker 3:Before I knew it it had like 200 women in it and people were asking each other, you know, where can we go for this, where can we go for this? And I was like huh, like maybe I should, you know, maybe I should start my own thing here. And it was always kind of in the back of my mind. But until I was a parent myself, it didn't really, you know, take hold of me. Until I was like okay, like I had a kid, like I want to take them to do something, you know. And sure enough, my kids go to my classes. They mostly sit up front with me, you know, and pretend they're the teacher too. But yeah, I mean, I guess I just saw a need and there's, you know, plenty of families to go around for for all of us music teachers. And here we are.
Speaker 2:And there's something cute like when you see your, your son or daughter at an early age start to dance around or be affected by music, and it's amazing what music can do. It's amazing, it's you know it's primal and itimo and it's involuntary. They just hear a song and they start dancing to it or want to sing along to it. Do you find it helps certain kids get out of their shells, and maybe even kids with special needs?
Speaker 3:A hundred percent. Going back to what you just said, and then I'll answer that I love when I see during class. I'll just start playing my guitar. I look around the room and there are babies four months old, five months old, that just kind of start rocking back and forth. Nice, nice, most natural, intuitive movement. You know, and you know, I hear parents say all the time like, oh I, like I'm not musical, like I can't carry a tune, like I'm like, you've got a heartbeat. You know, everyone's got a heartbeat you can you?
Speaker 3:can you know what a steady beat is? You know? Um yeah, we're all, we're all born with it. And uh yeah, in terms of you appealing to lots of different kids, I do.
Speaker 3:I actually have done many sensory friendly classes for kids on the spectrum in conjunction with a wonderful group called the Work of Heart Counseling that's also here in Bergen County and we invite in parents of special needs kids who may otherwise feel like maybe a little nervous about bringing their kid, you know, to to a class. And I, you know music, especially for kids who are on the spectrum, is very powerful. They love it, they are naturally just like good at it. It just speaks to them and there's many ways that I make it sensory friendly. But even if I don't like the kids, just you really see them come out of their shell and show their whole personality. And the parents, they just they love it because they get to see their kids really blossoming and enjoying themselves and being themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's great, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So tell us a little bit about the business itself. So you, you, you will go to places like little gym or my gym, or apple tree playhouse, and I noticed you'll do a lot of outdoor, I guess we'll call them concerts, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so as we're, we're into June and it feels like it's, you know, august on the surface of the sun yes, it does so where are we today? So this coming Wednesday you're playing an apple tree playhouse, which is in Westwood, which I think yes. I had one of the owners on the cover of the magazine yep she was in old Japan. So tell me a little bit more about the different types of classes and the different types of I guess we'll call them services that you have.
Speaker 3:Sure, so classes are all throughout the week. I have weekday classes, I've got weekend classes, which my working parents love, and they're all throughout Bergen County. So I mean I've taught in Paramus, fairlawn, ridgewood Park, ridge, englewood, franklin Lakes, like everywhere.
Speaker 3:I travel everywhere and you know, sometimes I do collaborations, like this Wednesday with Apple Tree Playhouse, which is nice, especially when the weather's this hot, because they get you know, the kids get a music class and then they get to explore the gym, so it's kind of like it takes up the whole morning, you know before the parents know it, it's time for nap time and you know, before the parents know it, it's time for nap time and you know some classes are geared towards, you know, the little guys and then some are mixed age, but all of the classes are really just highly interactive, educational and at the end of the day I like to say they're just plain old fun. My favorite thing is when you know the grownups tell me like I had such a great time, or the grandparents especially I love when the grandparents come, they're like that was such a throwback.
Speaker 3:I loved it.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 3:Because I do a lot of classic songs too. You know classic nursery rhymes that everybody knows, so that everyone can participate. And yeah, the classes all follow the same like overall structure. So we play a lot of different instruments, mostly handheld percussion, so think like shakers, tambourines, castanets, uh, euros, things like that. We move, we groove, we dance. Movement is, of course, a huge part of music education. You know feeling, feeling the music through your body, um, and then we play with a prop, so think like a toy part of music education. You know feeling, feeling the music through your body. And then we play with a prop, so think like a toy. So like beach balls this week, or stuffies or scarves or ribbons or the parachute, which everybody just loves. The kids go nuts over it.
Speaker 3:I try not to do it every class, but it's like sometimes they just, you know, they start saying parachute, Miss Carly. And we always do bubbles and dance parties, which is so much fun and yeah, we just, we just have a great time just moving and grooving our hearts out. I also do a lot of theme classes throughout the year for major holidays. So I'm doing July 4th classes this week, a Stars and Stripes sing-along, and people tend to get really dressed up, myself included, and go all out celebrating whatever holiday it may be. And then I also do birthday parties. A lot of the parents in my classes will hire me to perform at their kids' parties because the kid knows me and which I love to do, because who doesn't love a party?
Speaker 3:So I pop into parties on weekends, or sometimes I'll do a daycare party and go in during the week if the parents want something more low-key, something during the week. And then the last part of my business is that I think I mentioned this before is that I offer music classes for kids on the go. For parents who can't make it to music class, you know, maybe they have a really busy schedule or they're full time working or they have multiple kids with schedules that are crazy to juggle. So I have this podcast for kids ages 18 months to five that's meant to be played in the car and aptly called Miss Carly's Car Rides, and I started it a few months back and it's just been a wild success, like way more than I thought it would be, I think because parents myself included, I have kids under five really struggle with how to entertain their kids in the car.
Speaker 3:You know they buy like toy after toy that doesn't get used, and they're dealing with traffic here in Bergen. County and you know are we there yet and they tend to like not take long trips because of how chaotic the car can be with kids and I. Essentially it was weird, it just like one day just came to me, like I just I was like I'm going to solve this problem for parents with this podcast, and what's interesting is that it's a combination of music, education and stories and conversation and there's nothing else out there that I found in the podcast world for kids this age which I was like floored by, because I was like why doesn't this exist?
Speaker 3:Like there's podcasts of stories for kids, there's music for kids, but there isn't anything that incorporates both together the stories and the music or any music education podcast out there. So parents have been just like loving knowing that they can listen on the go and that their kid is entertained and educated and and it's been it's been great.
Speaker 2:So Wow, that's really cool so it's really fun.
Speaker 3:Miss Carly's Car Rides you can find on Spotify or any other podcast platform. Yeah, Spotify and Apple right now, and then you know we'll see where it takes me, but I've really been enjoying it.
Speaker 2:That's great. So you record it, you're playing and you're also giving stories behind the songs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then diving also into you know straight up music ed. Like this week I'm doing this Americana Mama episode and we're listening to a bunch of you know patriotic fanfare music and we're learning all about the trumpet and you know various brass instruments all by ear. So that's another thing, is it's you know a screen free option and it's it's really teaching kids active listening and yeah, I mean my kids like it.
Speaker 2:So that says something, because they're probably pretty sick of my voice. So my son, my son's 11. He plays the trumpet, but he told me, yeah, but he told me he's not going to do it next year. All of his friends dropped out and he, you know, he was like the only. I'm like come on, man, and I try to turn them onto Miles Davis and stuff like that. And I have guitars sitting around my house and a keyboard and I don't play. But you know, I can fiddle around with it, and YouTube is amazing to teach yourself stuff.
Speaker 2:He hasn't gravitated to it but I was like trumpet.
Speaker 1:that's great man, keep it up and his teacher, you know he got an A plus and he's like oh, everybody gets an A.
Speaker 2:I'm like all him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean he has, he's got a foundation. So truly I mean yeah, even if you pick up another instrument.
Speaker 2:When you're my age, you could be playing in jazz bands and just write the fun of it. I mean, look at me, I pick up the guitar.
Speaker 3:I play like every day, I just enjoy it Right, yeah, I mean, like that's, that's the goal, right, like that's it, like you just want to be able to, you know, just have fun with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So to get a little nerdy here, I see in your certification that Annie Lennox has a class that you're certified. No, just kidding. It says Delcroze Eurythmics Certified. Whatever that is.
Speaker 3:Oh, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And then Orf Schulwerk, schulwerk.
Speaker 3:Yes, or, and then?
Speaker 2:Orff Schulwerk? Yes, orff Schulwerk. So what are those certifications?
Speaker 3:I mean, I could get all technical and talk your ear off all day, but I'll keep it short and sweet, so I guess I'll start with Orff Schulwerk. So I have, I'm level three certified there. There's three levels as far as I know right now. I think that's all they offer and it's really just music through play.
Speaker 3:It's very play-based it's very sound before sight-based meaning. We focus in the classroom, when we're using the Orff-Schulwerk approach, on, instead of reading music, on feeling it and singing it and producing it ourselves and then going ahead and reading very much. You know, the same way that we learn a language, right? We?
Speaker 3:aren't asking babies to you know, read which is interesting because there's there's so much, I think, confusion about that, or really not confusion, but just like lack of awareness in the music world about what's in the music education world, about what's important. You know, parents are like I just want my kid to be able to read music, and that is important, but to be able to experience the music is first and foremost, comes first and foremost, um. So that's what that approach is all about. And then Delcro's Eurythmics is really just all about moving, feeling music within your body. So learning how to feel different forms of music, like a rondo in your body, learning how to um express you know, different um, different tempos of music, you could say, different um feelings. Yeah, so it's all about kind of embodying the music and nothing to do with annie lennox and dave stewart.
Speaker 2:No, nothing zero.
Speaker 3:so yeah, both of those those courses really kind of helped me just expand my, expand my mind about how to, how to teach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I want to go back one more time to your upcoming classes now, or, or I guess we call it classes. But what? Where is what do you do in Park Ridge, cause I see Park Ridge as a location. Do you have a studio? Do you have a like a, a location people come to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm glad you asked about that one. That's actually my most popular location. Well, park Ridge and Fairlawn, I would say, are dueling.
Speaker 3:So, Park Ridge. I rent out a wonderful space there it's First Congregational Church on Pasquack Road, big space. It's also used by a lot of other businesses that cater to young children's soccer shots and Fit for Mom, and we all use that space together and I teach there indoors on Thursdays at 10 o'clock and at 1115 AM Every Thursday throughout the school year. In the summer I do not use that location, so I'm only there until, I think, july 3rd, and then my Thursday classes are moving back to Fairlawn, which is where I live. My classes in Fairlawn started actually in my basement, but we live in a small Cape and, you know, before I knew it, I was getting so much demand and I kept having to say I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3:you know class is full, class is full and so I was like you know what time to rent a spot here. So I rent a. I've got a location in Fairlawn on Saddle River Road that I rent, and then I have an Elks Lodge in Paramus, just four minutes away, that I rent. But if we can be outside, which is just you know when it's not like this outside, although I did teach during the heat wave last year, free class on Make Music Day, when it was 101 degrees in June.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:I don't know how I got through that class, but I did. But when we're outside we're usually at Crest Hill Park in Fairlawn, which is a really quiet, shady, wonderful park with a playground and the outside classes are just. They're really chill, they're really. It's a vibe, it's a vibe, but actually it's harder for me to teach outside. There's a lot of factors the sound carries, the children carry.
Speaker 2:They're off everywhere, but I still enjoy it. I do. That's great. So how would people um get in contact with you? Which what's the best way to reach you?
Speaker 3:The best way is by joining my email list, um, at my website, saddle river song. com. The website has a list of all my upcoming classes by month, um, and everything is only posted one month in advance because I've got little kids and it's hard to plan. But if they click subscribe at the bottom, they'll get a list of all the classes emailed to them once a week and they also get some exclusive discounts that are offered to my subscribers only and bonus content for my podcast episodes and some more perks podcast episodes and some more perks. And the other great way to keep up to date is through Instagram by following Saddle River Song and Miss Carly's Car Rise for the new podcast episodes, and then you can also listen, you know, on Apple or Spotify if you want to check it out there, and that's pretty much it, that's you know that's great.
Speaker 2:I hope to see people in class, yeah, yeah, no, this is very cool and you know, I think, as I mentioned, I play guitar so I'm always keen to talk to people like you and I think it's great bringing you know that experience to kids and exposing them to it, and you never know where they go from there, right it's so true.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for having me on the show. This was awesome yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you for being a guest, and bear with me, chuck's just he's going to take us out and you and I'll be right back.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.