Bandsm is a texture slightly similar to Impulse’s old Linear. It applies colour to a certain range of locations based on their Z location in the texture axis. You might add the colour to the parts of the object between 20 and 30 Z units: you’ll apply a 10 unit wide band of colour. You can also make a transition zone before and after the band, so for 5 units (or whatever) the surface colour will gradually be faded into the band colour instead of making a razor sharp change.

These textures can be really useful, especially when animated. You might use the Shellsm texture to make a graphic depiction of a wave travelling on a map away from the epicentre of an earthquake by morphing larger ring radii in time.

Another idea is to use the Bandsm texture to apply a thin line that traverses your object from one end to another, like a scanning beam from a measurement device.

You can also make some neat planet effects. You can use several copies of Cylindsm on a flat disk to create planetary rings. Use the texture to add a filter value of 0, 0, 0 to a completely transparent object, exposing the rings.