Most of Grandi's music is vocal with instrumental accompaniment. Stylistically, his early music is similar to that of Giovanni Gabrieli, with alternating short passages of greatly contrasting rhythms and texture; however he usually wrote for smaller forces. Most of Grandi's early compositions are motets in the concertato style: some are duets and trios, an innovation in motet writing, which usually involved larger groups. Grandi was one of the few composers who continued to write involved vocal polyphony over the "basso continuo" right after its introduction—most composers using the continuo in the first decades of the 17th century wrote monodies, or preferred more homophonic textures.