He served as the Senior Director of the Central Military Band of the People's Commissariat of National Defense of the USSR from 1924 to 1950.

From 1892-1893, Chernetsky studied the trombone in the orchestra of the 24th Dragoon Lubny Regiment in Kishinev, Bessarabia Governorate (now Chișinău, Moldova), where his uncle Issac was the conductor.

In 1900, due to the difficult financial situation of the family, after the death of his father and without graduating from college, he was sent to Kishinev to live with Issac.

At first he tried his hand as an assistant to his uncle, and in 1903 he himself became bandmaster of the 14th Artillery Brigade (part of the 15th Infantry Division of the Imperial Russian Army).

He quickly rose through the ranks, eventually being appointed as the director of the Military Band of the Workers and Peasants Red Army in 1924.