Interesting Keyboard Instruments in Their Natural Habitats

I sometimes find it helpful and enjoyable to think about the instruments I hear in songs. This thread aims to bring together a selection of weird, wacky or beautiful keyboard instruments. Please post a description of the instrument (written, diagrammatic or a clip) along with one or two songs that show the instrument in use. Content doesn't need to be original, just interesting or informative.

Let's start with the Mellotron. No doubt pedestrian to some; Certainly new to others. In either case, a novel approach to instrument emulation.







Please go ahead and post something for the rest of us to learn about and/or consider.

 

Was amazed when someone showed me the inside of a working mellatron. I would never have guessed at magnetic tapes for each note! Astonishing.

 

Wow - I learned something today! Thank You!

 

Big Piano!

Can be heard on this album.

 

How about a glass harmonica, or the Glass Armonica, a Ben Franklin invention:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_harmonica

Basically a series of glass bowls on a spindle shaft played by soaking your fingers in vinegar and using your fingers to play.

 

The "regal" is a pretty obscure instrument. It's a bit like a small, portable organ played by two people: One to use the keyboard and another to pump the bellows. The sound is produced by air being forced through sets of small double reeds, which then vibrate.

It sounds amusingly like a duck that's been sampled and played back on a synth at various pitches:



It's essentially a mechanised version of a double-reed renaissance wind instrument, the crumhorn:



I've only got a couple of recordings that use the regal, and they are both of Praetorius' "Dances from Terpsichore". Tried to find commercial recordings on YouTube that feature the regal, but without any luck.