[3] Grallaria antpittas are a "wonderful group of plump and round antbirds whose feathers are often fluffed up...they have stout bills [and] very short tails".

Adults of the nominate subspecies have a brown or olive ochre forecrown and a gray crown and nape with faint black scaling.

Their underparts are mostly ochraceous to pale rufous with wavy black lines that give a scalloped appearance; their undertail coverts are unmarked bright tawny ochre.

Subspecies G. s. canicauda has a darker forecrown than the nominate, with ochraceous lores, less white on their chin, and a paler throat and upper breast with wider black lines.

The nominate subspecies is found in western Venezuela in the Serranía del Perijá and south in the Andes from Lara to Táchira.

Subspecies G. s. canicauda is known only from three specimens collected in Colonia Tovar, a town in Aragua state in the western Venezuelan Coastal Range.

The great antpitta's song, known only from the nominate subspecies, is "a long (4-6 sec), low-pitched, rubber-lipped trill, br'r'r'r'r'r'r'r'...r'r'r'r'r'ub...with barely perceptible rise in pitch and temp and abrupt ending".

[5] The species mostly sings from dawn into the early morning, mostly in the rainy season between April and November and less frequently during the rest of the year.