If you want to call up animations on a note then the animation must be written as a state machine, which given your lack of knowledge of how look up tables work is another step in complexity of programming above look up tables.
Then you have to be able to drive several at once. Just use the one strip and restrict any pattern or animation to a specific range of LED numbers.
Wouldn't I want the show function to be continuously running to update the LEDs?
No you don’t need to update any faster than 30 per second because you can’t perceive anything faster.