| Term | Description |
|---|
| Bell | The bell of a wind instrument is the round, flared opening opposite the mouthpiece. It is found on horns, trumpets and many other kinds of instruments. |
| Bellows | A bellows is a device for delivering pressurized air in a controlled quantity to a controlled location. Basically, a bellows is a deformable container which has an outlet nozzle. |
| Belly | Belly is the upper or outer surface of a stringed musical instrument, nearer the strings; the other surface is the back. |
| Bicinium | In music of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras, a bicinium (pl. bicinia) was a composition for only two parts, especially one with a pedagogical purpose. |
| Big band | A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s. |
| Binary form | Binary form is a way of structuring a piece of music into two related sections, both of which are usually repeated. |
| Bitonality | Bitonality is the musical use of only two different keys at the same time. |
| Black note | On keyboard instruments, a black note is one of the smaller keys that stand above the white notes. |
| Blue note | In jazz and blues, blue notes are notes sung or played at a lower pitch than those of the major scale for expressive purposes. |
| Bluegrass region | The Bluegrass region is a region of the United States, mostly in northern Kentucky, containing a majority of the state's population. |
| Bocal | A bocal is the mouthpiece of a musical instrument. It's a curved, tapered tube, which is an integral part of certain woodwind instruments, including the bassoon, contrabassoon, and English horn, and which connects the reed to the rest of the instrument. |
| Bohlen-Pierce scale | The Bohlen-Pierce scale (BP scale) is a musical scale that offers an alternative to the octave-repeating scales typical in Western and other musics. |
| Bore | The bore of a wind instrument is its interior chamber that defines a flow path through which air travels and is set into vibration to produce sounds. |
| Bow | In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. |
| Brass band | A brass band is a musical group generally consisting entirely of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. |
| Brass instrument | A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose tone is produced by vibration of the lips as the player blows into a tubular resonator. They are also called labrosones, literally meaning "lip-vibrated instruments." |
| Brass quintet | A brass quintet is a five-piece musical ensemble composed of brass instruments. The most common instrumentation is two trumpets or cornets, one French horn, one trombone, and one tuba or bass trombone. |
| Bravo | An exclamation, coming from italian word "bravo" ("clever", "good"), made by an audience member after an enjoyed or otherwise successful musical/dramatic performance. |
| Break | In popular music a break is an instrumental or percussion section or interlude during a song derived from or related to stop-time – being a "break" from the main parts of the song or piece. |
| Bridge | A bridge is a device for supporting the strings on a stringed instrument and transmitting the vibration of those strings to some other structural component of the instrument in order to transfer the sound to the surrounding air. |
| Broken consort | A broken consort (also called Morley consort or English consort) is an instrumental ensemble that developed in Europe during the Renaissance. It originally referred to ensembles featuring instruments from more than one family of instruments, as for example a group featuring both string and wind instruments. |
| Burgundian School | The Burgundian School is a term used to denote a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy. The main names associated with this school are Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, Antoine Busnois and (in England and her empire of that time in France) John Dunstaple. |
| Busking | Busking is the practice of doing live performances in public places to entertain people, usually to solicit donations and tips. |
| BWV | The Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Bach Works Catalogue) is the numbering system identifying compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. |
