Carol singing help

[Star555]

I've been asked to make a recording of myself singing What Child is This (assigned sheet music shown at left) which will be digitally combined with others' recordings to create a virtual choir. I'm not a trained singer, and my vocal range comfortably goes up to only the first A above middle C (i.e. A4 at 440 Hz). The range of the song feels too high for me, but can I transpose it to lower notes without sounding out of tune with the others? I cannot go down a full octave -- that would be far too low for me. Is there any "legal" interval I can go down by and still sound good? Thank you!

You need to ask whoever is putting the tracks together if they can cope with you adding your own harmony. No point asking us. But it's not particularly high, do a proper vocal warmup, and give it a go. You don't have to send the first recording, if it goes wrong, delete and try again. It helps if you can have a guide track playing in your ear through a headphone.

Yes they provided a guide track but it is very confusing because it contains both the top and bottom lines which as you see are completely different songs I can't clearly make out the melody well at all, it sounds so jumbled with the harmony. (I love the main melody but can't imagine why someone would add a harmony like that which covers it up!) I'm rather embarrassed to ask the person in charge of this because I don't regularly attend the church services as they likely think I do they will expect me to already have practice in singing together at church.

You can't transpose it- it already has a harmony on the second line. And it wouldn't be as simple anyway as singing say a third below. That wouldn't reliably create a nice harmony.

Are you sure you can't sing higher than an 'a'? That isn't very high even for an alto voice. As a pp suggested I'd find some vocal warm ups on YouTube and try the piece as it is

I mean I can produce higher notes, but not strongly enough to sustain a full sound and sing words in time with rhythm. I could do it if singing only a simple scale with long notes, but it's not easy for me naturally in the middle of a song. I will try some warmups.