Thats a cool idea to make your led strip work from any general audio signal, but I'm just curious to know why you didnt go for the MIDI implementation, where you would have NoteON and NoteOFF messages for the precise keys, along with velocity values if you want to do something fancy based on the intensity of playing too, with no signal processing involved. Nice project, congrats!
Technically fft is a "fast" implementation of the Discrete Fourier Transform. Not to beconfused with the Discrete-Time Fourier Transform, Nor the Discrete Fourier Series. Yes they are all different. Have fun in signals. Which you will take spring of 25'.