Well, my college degree was in music and I always had a knack for theory, testing out of college courses etc. But you don't have to have university level music

Well, my college degree was in music and I always had a knack for theory, testing out of college courses etc. But you don't have to have university level music theory knowledge to study jazz theory. I'd say the prerequisites for the more complex jazz deck of mine are knowledge of scales (major, melodic minor, major bebop, minor bebop), chord qualities (M7, 7, m7, m7b5), chord inversions, and treble clef notation. For the people reading this that do jazz, it's based off of Randy Halberstadt's concepts of planets and harmony. Scale choices differ from the classic guideline of being simply chord based. For instance, dmi7 does not necessarily imply a d dorian scale. If it's in the key of C at that point, then you'd instead play C major bebop.