Musikmesse is the world's largest instrument trade show. It's held in Frankfurt, Germany, each spring, and kind of makes NAMM look like a garage sale. Roland is debuting five new products there, including the cool GAIA three-layer virtual analog synth and the LUCINA shoulder-strap synth--a little sister to the AX-Synth we reviewed in the May 2010 issue.

This year, Messe starts Wednesday, March 24 and goes through the following Saturday. But we didn't have to wait until then to give you the full skinny on these new products. The Roland peeps came by our office two weeks earlier, swore us to secrecy until midnight Frankfurt time on the 24th, and gave us great product demos as we rolled video.

Now we can tell you what we've been bursting to tell you. All these products are cool, but brace yourself to want the GAIA as much as we do.

Trouble seeing the videos below? CLICK HERE.