Syncing to music is going to be a pain - especially as it sounds like you don't have a LOT of microcontroller/arduino experience.
Here's a flickr set showing how I made/laid out my LED matrix table
I'd recommend starting out just making the table with some built in patterns. Then when you've got that working, add the sound sensing part. You won't need to change anything on the existing table, it'll just be adding the sound sensing part, and that can be hidden wherever you've hidden the arduino.
Once you do decide to go down the sound path, I'd highly recommend Macetech's ShiftyVU shield - it's a lot more powerful and you will get significantly better results than trying to use a plain microphone + amplifier. Trust me it'll be WAY less frustrating in the end.