Downscale is a 3-minute rock cue by Bill Ballan. We listed it because the arrangement has a clear beginning, a usable middle, and an ending you can cut — not a one-bar loop dumped as a “track.” Preview on Soundex, then download the CC0 / public-domain file if it fits the edit.

Source: Internet Archive item in_spirit_and_in_truth. Soundex hosts the catalog page; the audio remains the public-domain / CC0 original.

License: CC0 / public domain — commercial use, no attribution required
Genre hub: Rock
Moods: focus, epic
Creator workflows: youtube, gaming, tiktok

This cue tends to fit montage and B-roll more than cold opens: give it 8–12 seconds before dialogue so the first phrase is not clipped. Duck 8–12 dB under speech. Pair with focus, epic if the picture is slower than the drum pattern.

How we would cut this into a video

Listen once without picture; note any 4-bar phrase you would loop.
Drop it under a mute of your VO and ride the clip gain — not the track fader — so the bed stays consistent.
Export a 15-second scratch and watch it on a phone speaker; cheap devices hide muddy mids.
Keep the Soundex URL and the Archive source in a text file with the video title.

Treat “Downscale” as a bed, not a hero song: if viewers hum it louder than your VO, you mixed it too hot.

This page is part of Soundex topical authority for free rock music — not a duplicate of other track pages. Next: more Rock, the full catalog, or guides on YouTube music and royalty-free vs copyright-free.

Bill Ballan

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