Is there any way to sync lighting to music without the use of "smart" technology? I'm not thinking about Christmas light displays, just something small for the living room.
It isn't exactly what you are looking for, but it would be easy enough to connect a single LED or small group of them rather than a string of lights. That would make it act much like what I think you're asking for.
Decades ago, there were "old school" devices like I think you're talking about. They just had a microphone and an analog amplifier that drove lights based on the amplitude of sound sensed. You set the sensitivity of the microphone with a knob, just like a volume knob. So the lights pulsed with the music.
This "Twinkly" thing isn't that. It's a digital device, using analog-to-digital conversion and then a processor to "decide" how to drive the lights. But even though it's not "old school," it can be made to act just like the analog device I mentioned above. Or you can make it do other stuff, so you have a lot of fun choices.