He presumably received his first lessons from his father, who was sonatore di viola at the court of the Gonzaga in that city.
From 1629 to 1631, he was a prominent member of the electoral court orchestra in Bonn, until he returned to Italy, where he worked in Parma and later in Lucca until 1635.
For example, in his work Capriccio Stravagante (1627) he used the violin to imitate animal sounds like dogs barking or cats fighting.
According to Cecil Forsyth's Orchestration, he "is generally credited" with "the invention of the double-stop"[1] (although nearly a century earlier Ganassi’s Regola rubertina (1542–3) describes the technique, suggesting it was common among contemporary viol players.[2]).
Musical lineage aside, Carlo Farina was granted the title of Count of Reggio di Calabria by Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy.