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Double Bass Slow metronoms

Some of the really beefy, expensive metronomes targeted towards drummers might go that low. I did a jazz clinic a few years ago where the clinician showed us an exercise on his metronome where he set the bpm to something ridiculously low and used that as the down beat to every fourth or eighth measure.
 
there is an article by gary karr in july 2010 issue of the strad magazine in which he talks about rhythm and the rhythmical feeling of the old masters like casals and kreisler. thats very interesting and so i want to try how they got is feeling.
its an experiment.
thanks for asking and responing, michael
 
The jokes are good but I use really slow metronome practice quite a lot. I downloaded the free version of Easy Beats on my Ipad, it's very easy to use and the way it is laid out is fun to goof off with. There is a grid of four beats subdivided into sixteenth notes horizontally and a bunch of goofy drum sounds vertically, I only use the rim shot as I think it works the best for a metronome.
Setting the tempo at 15bpm and having clicks every sixteenth note gives you clicks at 60bpm, having those clicks be two and four (or one and three, if that's your thing) makes your tempo 120. After playing for a bit get rid of every other click (by touching them on the grid to delete them) and have clicks only once every bar. You can do that twice more and end up with a click once every eight bars while still playing 120bpm. The effective metronome marking is now 3.75bpm. You'll learn some things about your rythmic concept while trying to improvise over changes.
Now back to Shirly Horn jokes.............
 
I've got a Boss Dr. Beat DB-60. It goes down to 30 bpm. I set the bpm to 36, set the time signature to 4/4, set the quarter note volume to zero, set the beat 1 accent to max volume: voila, 9 bpm.
Thanks,
Pete

(edit) Sorry Chris. I didn't read the second paragraph of your post. Same principle, different metronome.
 
I can't imagine a circumstance where I would need a metronome beat that slow, but if I did, I would write a Finale file, voice it with an appropriate MIDI instrument, create an mp3 soundfile from the score, and upload it to an mp3 player. If you have the tools available, it's an approach you might consider.