Since I’ve been involved in the design of our updated website and have experience with photography, the Pastor reached out to me about live streaming our services so that in spite of the stay at home orders we could still see and hear the good news of the risen Christ. 

I have over 45 years of photography experience and just enough video experience to be dangerous and no experience with advance audio production, so I quickly reached out to Larry Lee to help with the audio. Larry does a great job of balancing the microphones during the services and he has a good understanding of the basics of running an audio mixer.

Unfortunately, we quickly realized that what we needed to do was far beyond the basics of running the mixer. As we made improvements in our video production our audio efforts lagged far behind. We needed some professional help and I was able to literary reach out half a world away for that help. 

Serge Tiagniryadno is a songwriter, vocalist, musician, sound engineer, arranger who runs Crystal Sound Production in Kiev, Ukraine. Serge is also one of the leader singers for the Russian Chicago cover band Leonid & Friends. Last year, I was the official photographer for five of their United States tour stops and I’ve gotten to know all the band members including Serge. 

In desperation and trying to overcome the nine hour time difference, I used Facebook message video and reached out to Serge for help and he thankfully agreed to help us. Over four sessions, using Teamviewer software, Facebook Messenger, and lots of patience with someone who has little audio experience, he helped setup us up to record audio from our mixer directly to a laptop. From there, we were then able to add the soundtrack to our video editing software to combine with two camera video to provide an improved experience for this Sunday. 

This is still a work in progress. There will be bumps in the road as we continue to learn what we are doing. We have plans to continue to do live streaming once we are able to return to our normal services, but that too will have more challenges for us to overcome.   

I hope you will join me in reaching out and thanking Serge by subscribing to his YouTube channel to listen to his music sung in his native language Ukrainian. Here is Serge singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.