Hi. Thanks for outlining some of your perspective. I think part of my confusion here has to do with what is meant by "loop". I tend to think of it as any repeated musical material in a piece of digital music, original or not. I know that in my pieces, a lot of the drum parts and bass lines, and even some of the main melodies, consist of loops that I created for the track myself, either by playing them on my keyboard, or manually clicking them into the program, and then changing them by layering different effects on them. But I understand now these are not the kinds of loops or effects you were referring to.
I'm pleased to hear that when you listened to other submissions you heard only original melodies, and no pre-made loops. But this should not have surprised you, because pre-made loops were not allowed to be used in this jam (and perhaps should not be used in your submission.) It's on the question and answer section on the overview page.