Growlometry

Starting with the kind of growl that singers like Bono use relatively effectively to lead up to a note in a pop song - a la, " slight of hand and twist of fate, on a bed of nails she makes me wait," but that can be used to egregiously ill-effect, a unit of measurement should be established that standardizes the effectiveness of these vocal growls. I have the feeling that this will be both hard to do and interesting, because 1. It is a standard technique, 2. It feels effective to me at some times and other times grossly ineffective, and, 3. some other people don't agree with me about the effectiveness of specific examples of this vocal growl technique - which makes me think that it is not just aesthetics and opinion going on here but a specific kind of hearing blindness/hyper-sensitivity that is clouding the possibility of standardization of agreement on the effectiveness of these vocal growls.

Eventually this kind of measurement could be used to score and then optimize what will surely turn into purely a vocal musical genre.