More than 20 years ago or so I made a small LED display that used a series of LM567 (frequency detection ICs) and LM3914 (bar chart drivers) to make a simple histogram for music.

It was fiddly, and probably too inaccurate for a modern audience but I can't claim it was diabolically hard. Tuning was a faff but we were more willing to sit and tweak resistor and capacitor values then.