Along with his compatriots Giovanni Paolo Foscarini and Angelo Michele Bartolotti, he was a pioneer and exponent of the combination of strummed and plucked textures referred to today as "mixed" style.

[1] In the Italian preface to his 1671 La Guitarre Royalle, he claims that he was self-taught on the guitar, and also that he had never played the lute (unlike most celebrated guitarists of his day).

He was however frequently granted leave of absence and traveled abroad to Spain probably between 1644-1647 where he amazed the Court in Madrid with his virtuosity; to Germany where he was in the employ of the dukes of Hanover and the Spanish Netherlands, dedicating his fourth book, Varii scherzi di sonate to the governor, the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm.

While living in England, Corbetta supplemented his income as a musician with his activities as a professional gambler, particularly by operating a game called “L’accia di Catalonia,” which was similar to roulette.

Corbetta's compositional style has been noted for its liberal use of dissonance, which is often not prepared or resolved according to the conventions of seventeenth-century music.

Pinnell and Lex Eisenhardt have suggested, based on internal evidence, that Corbetta's tablatures may present notes that are not meant to be played, as a kind of left-hand fingering aid for the performer.

Monica Hall, on the other hand, has argued that Corbetta's dissonances are not unique in Baroque guitar literature, but that his writing shows instead a difference in the degree to which the less formal practices of the early battuto style are incorporated into the more formal notation of the mature mixed style, especially in the 1671 La Guitarre Royalle.

[8][9][10] Corbetta was the most significant guitar composer of his day (Gaspar Sanz called him "el mejor de todos," or "the greatest of all") and one of the first to publish in the mixed style.