: Left hand bass muting when playing the first fret I've been practising a piece that plays the open A-string followed by the E-string at the first fret. Normally I would just mute the A string whilst fretting the next note,

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Bass muting often isn't simple - it helps to have more than one trick.

In this case I would try various combinations of

trying to mute the A string a bit with the finger that I'm using to fret the F
stretching out my little ('pinky') finger to mute the A string further down the string
using a finger on the right hand to mute the A string.

As you guessed, using right-hand muting is going to give you much more 'muting power' than left hand alone.

There's not much you can do with conventional bass setup to allow open strings to ring and also help muting, but if you always want to err on the side of muting, you can use tricks like putting a bit of foam under the strings near the bridge - or something like these specialised string mutes.

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When you say it's so high up the fretboard, I guess you mean the string's action is too high. In itself, that shouldn't be a problem for l.h. muting, but it's not a bad idea to get both hands involved in muting.

A player I know evolved a personal way to mute, on 5 string, where very string was muted except the string being played. It was pretty complicated, but after all the time he practised it, it worked - for him.

I play bass a lot, and often find I don't mute anything, and the playing is still clean. I suppose by being careful releasing a fretted note, so not allowing that string to ping, there's not a great need. But being able to stop stray strings sounding (alliteration!) with either and sometimes both hands is a good thing.