DRUMMER CAFE

 OK I'm a pretty meticulous person, and when I play a song I like to play "perfectly" to the best of my abilities. I normally transcribe portions of songs that I do in my school's jazz ensemble while I'm at rehearsals, which isn't too hard, but other songs take me FOREVER. The most recent song I learned/transcribed was Dream Theater's Take the Time, and I really worked hard on it. I started at the beginning and basically went measure by measure, figuring out time signatures, then everything that went in between. I go through all of that for two reasons: 1. I hate tabs and always get lost in all of those stupid dashes while playing and 2. This stuff helps me with my listening and analyzing(especially in recognizing odd time signatures). Take the Time was probably the longestand most complex song I've done, and after that I know something's gotta change. I'm thinking maybe I should outline all of the measures first, then add in all of the instruments one by one, highest to lowest orvice versa. Anything you more experienced guys use would be really helpful here. The next song I'm gonna do is the song by the Meters called Sissy Strut, which will be way easier in that it is just 4/4 the whole way through and only three minutes long.  On a related note, I'm pretty good with percussion notation and where to put little X's on the notes instead of filled in O's and on which instruments to do that on (from symphonic band, wind ensemble, percussion ensemble, jazz band, etc.), but I have horrendous handwriting and part of what takes me so long is trying to get all of the notes looking legible. I know there is software that can do this, but hell will freeze over before I spend $500 on Finale! Do you know of anything free that just places notes on paper than I could download?
   Thanks in advance for any help, this stuff is basically what I've been doing over all of the snow days I've had this year(18 an counting).
     -Mark