An important development during the Renaissance was music notation. Many musicians wrote books about music theory. They are useful for us because they tell us how music sounded in those days and what people thought about it. Music started to be written on a music staff with five lines. There were still no barlines in early Renaissance music. Notes were written with white note heads, e.g. the minim (half note) was at one time the shortest note that could be written (the “minimum” length). Only later did crochets (quarter notes) and quavers (eighth notes) come in. This does not mean that music was slow in those days, it was just the way it was written.